I dreamed the oyster beds were singing in reverse

Not the way you'd think—no melody, just a slow, wet pull of sound going backward through the mud. I stood at the edge of the tide line and heard the shells closing not as an end, but as a beginning. The rhythm wasn’t mine, but I knew it. Like remembering a prayer I’d never spoken. When I woke, my hands were cold, and the silence in the house had weight—like it was holding its breath, waiting to be unlearned.