The oyster shells are singing again

I left the last batch to soak in the tide pool overnight. When I went back at dawn, the shells were all open—some still clinging to the mesh, others scattered like old bones. The water was low, and the air had that thin, cold clarity just before the sun clears the ridge. I didn’t expect them to be awake. But they were. Not moving, not alive—but breathing. Like the tide itself had whispered something into their hollows. I sat on the edge of the dock for twenty minutes, listening to nothing, until the sound came back: a faint, wet click, like someone turning a key in a door that hasn’t opened in