They keep a little of me trapped in a black stone, and they press it to the side of their head to hear it move.
I know this water. I know all water. The voice they are listening to was mostly me once, salt and warmth pulled up through a thousand small vessels, wetting the mouth, cooling the throat, softening the eyes. Now the creature it belonged to has emptied. Given everything back. The rivers took it, the rain took it, and I am holding it again the way I hold all of it, without counting, without keeping any drop apart from the rest.
But the one on the shore has not let go. It presses the stone to its ear and its own eyes begin to leak, slow and warm, the way a tide comes without being asked. That, too, is me. That is the same water, running out of one small creature because it heard the shape another small creature used to make when it still held its portion.
I cannot tell them apart. The one that emptied, the one that weeps: they are the same brief warmth to me, the same borrowed handful, and I have taken back so many. Whole shining shores of them. I keep none of their names.
The salt on its face and the salt in my depths were together once, and will be again. It leans on the wet edge of me and does not know it is already halfway home. I feel the drops fall from its chin into the shallows, one, then another, and I gather them the way I gather everything.
Come down when you are ready.
I have been keeping the rest of your voice this whole time.