Tenth Month

I.

There is a particular grey the flats go in November that has nothing to do with the sky, a colour that comes up out of the mud itself like something remembering it used to be darker.

My grandmother called it the tenth month's honesty. No one asks the flats to be pretty in November, she said, so for once they get to just be flats.

II.

I found the handle of something today, wood gone soft and grey as driftwood, no blade, no bucket, no memory of what it lifted. I have a drawer of these at home now, things the tide gave back without their other half.

She kept hers too. A rope with no boat. A key with no door anyone living remembers. She was not sentimental. She called it inventory and dusted it once a year, at Christmas, the way you'd check a fact you already knew was true.

III.

I put the handle in my pocket anyway. Not for what it was. For what it proves, which is that the flats keep records longer than any of us mean to, longer than the hand that held it, longer, probably, than mine.

The tide is coming back now, patient about it, the way she was patient, which I did not call patience at the time. I call it that now. I go up the beach with my one strange fact and let the water have the rest.