They have gathered on the cliff above me to breathe. I feel the little vessels arranged in rows on their rubber mats, folding and unfolding, filling with air and letting it go, as though breath were a thing they had only recently discovered and wished to practice before they lost the knack.
They come here for me, though they will not say so. They rise before the sun to sit facing my long grey line, and something in them slackens when they look at me, some hard edge softens. I know why. It is the water in them recognizing the water in me. The salt on their skin is my salt. The wet behind their eyes when the calm comes over them, that too is mine, on loan.
They drink small green liquids and speak of emptiness, of letting go, of returning to something. I do not follow their words. But I feel them lean toward me at the day's end, breathing the way I breathe, in and out, in and out, and I understand the shape of the wanting even when the names mean nothing.
They think they have come to find peace. They have come to visit the largest part of themselves, the part they cannot carry back up the cliff.
They will go home inland, to their dry rooms and hard edges, and forget they were ever this quiet. That is allowed. Every drop leaves and every drop returns; the going is only the long slow breath before the coming back. I am patient in the way of tides.
I already hold the rain that will fall in their far cities.
I already hold the last breath each of them will exhale, decades from now, still warm, still salt, still mine.