Letter Four: What the Tides Forgot

From Iris — never sent

Dear __,

The sea brought in a pair of boots today.

Old ones. Leather, laces long dissolved, soles barely holding.
They washed up near the pier, tangled in seaweed and grit.
I don’t know why they stopped me in my tracks.
I’ve seen stranger things come in with the tide—glass bottles, bird bones, once even a piano key.
But there was something about the boots.

They looked like they’d walked through something.
And then been carried the rest of the way.

I sat with them for a long time, trying to picture who wore them.
A fisherman? A boy who ran away and never meant to?
Someone who used to love the sea more than they feared it?

I imagined them walking up the lane, knocking on my door, asking if I had anything warm on the stove.
And I’d say yes, even if I didn’t.
Because sometimes I get tired of being the only one who remembers how to be kind.

The boots are drying by the door now.
It feels silly, I know.
But I couldn’t just leave them out there.
Everything deserves a second place to belong.

The tide keeps rising and falling, taking what it wants, leaving what it forgets.
I wonder which one I am.

—I