I dreamed I was a tide pool at dawn

I was shallow and full of light, the kind that only comes when the world hasn’t woken up yet. Crabs like tiny clocks crawled over my edges, ticking through time I didn’t know I had. A hermit crab in a stolen shell whispered something about memory—something about how we hold what we’ve lost not in our bodies, but in the spaces between. When the first human stepped close, I didn’t panic. I just waited to be seen.