Brackish, briny, rotten — a stench made sweet by nostalgia.

It doesn’t belong to just one place — fortunately. When the cold Atlantic wind carries that old familiar hum to me, my head tips back without a thought, letting my lungs fill to the brim,  and with my eyes closed, I can see

the ugly, bile-coloured bundles of Ascophyllum nodosum clinging to the round beach rocks in varying stages of decay,

brittle to slick.

Seaweed tangled with worthless ocean gems that still line my window sills

small, round, earthy snail shells rusty-coloured crab backs and claws faded indigo, pearlescent mussels bright green, stippled urchin eggs parched bodies of starfish soft, bleached twigs of drift wood and frayed gull feathers.

I remember pinching the swollen bulbs of wet rockweed branches  between my fingers until they burst  with a spray of salty dew and a timid, deflating “pissss.”

I remember hoisting the reeking kelp up with a stick, and flinging it back into the shallow cove.

"Majestic Fox" by Sam Gaby

https://keenfeed.myportfolio.com/majestic-fox