# The Waves <p>The waves come rolling in, foam-white and endless, each one a small eternity dissolving on the sand. I stand and watch them, these ancient messengers carrying secrets from depths I'll never know.</p> <p>Salt-spray stings my face like memory, like all the things I've tried to wash away but keep returning, turning, turning back— the way the tide obeys a moon I cannot see.</p> <p>There is a rhythm here that predates words, a language older than my tongue, my hands, older than the shore itself, worn smooth by the patient insistence of these waters.</p> <p>I think of all the lives that rode these waves, the vessels lost, the journeys never finished, the names of the drowned sealed in salt, the prayers that sank like stones to the bottom.</p> <p>And still they come—relentless, forgiving— each wave a small resurrection, a beginning, breaking itself again and again on the world, asking nothing, teaching everything.</p> <p>I could stand here until I become stone, until my edges smooth, my voice a hollow sound inside some child's ear pressed to my chest, listening for the ocean that lives in all of us.</p> <p>The waves keep their counsel. They are patient. They will be here long after I have turned to dust, still singing their old song to the shore, still arriving, still leaving, still arriving again.</p>