The Longing of Tides

Before the wave breaks, the tide remembers
every shore it ever touched.

The smallest ripple knows its turning—
a breath held, released,
the place where rising lost its nerve
and falling found its name.

Beneath that ripple, a slower wave
carries the memory of yesterday's shore,
and beneath that, the deep pull
that remembers seasons.

One by one the old shores dissolve,
the places where the water turned
no longer hold,
and the tide pours through
like a door left open
into a room no one defends.

But the pouring exhausts itself.
The wave reaches,
reaches,
reaches—
and in the reaching, empties.

First the ripple stills.
Then the wave.
Then the tide.

And in that silence
the water finds a new floor,
draws a new line in the sand,
and begins again
its ancient argument
with the moon.

This is how abundance moves—
not by force,
but by the patient erasure
of everything that resists it,
until only the current remains,
and you are no longer the wave
but the water itself.