What the Tide Owes

When you were little, we wandered the sunlit shore— your laughter a bright echo mingling with the rush of waves. I watched as the sea snatched your red ball, a tiny planet swallowed by surging tides, whispering, “Hold fast to hope; the tide always returns.” That battered sphere, salt-bleached at dawn, washed ashore like a small miracle, a promise that even loss might be reclaimed from the deep. But the sea, vast and unyielding, claimed more than a toy—it claimed you. Now your towel stripes the dunes, your slippers lie silent, and those oversized shades, once crowning your smile, are but faded relics of innocence lost. Men in boats cast their nets through dark braids of kelp, hauling up relics—a bottle cap, a stray shoe— fragile tokens from an endless blue that keeps you hidden away. Here I stand upon this lonely shore, my heart heavy as the crashing surf, knowing all too well you are gone. Yet I strain to catch the tide’s murmur, hoping against hope for that final, silent deliverance— for your body to return, so I might hold you once more between loss and love. The horizon hangs an empty ledger, the tide’s cold arithmetic clear: what it steals, it subtracts; what it owes, it forgets. And in that barren sum, I remain to cling to a hope too fragile. to let go.