What the Tide Left
đ TCDJ⢠Entry 001 - Nothing is ever truly abandoned. Some things are just given more time to decide what theyâll become.
Nothing is ever truly abandoned. Some things are just given more time to decide what theyâll become.
â Field Notes, Remnant Survey, Year 72
Imagine youâre not you. Not anymore.
Youâre this chunk of driftwood, splintered, sun-bleached, half-buried in the kind of wet sand that smells like something died just under the surface.
And maybe something did.
Maybe it was you.
Or the version of you that still gave a shit.
Hard to tell. Youâve been lying here too long to know what was rot and what was root. The damp presses in against old fractures. Sand gritting into every softened line of you, like breath forced through rotten teeth. Your weight sinks by inches, ribs remembering the shape of drowning.
Somewhere inland, a metal throat hums its own story, waiting its turn. You were once tall. Upright. Stubborn. You reached for things onceâlight, air, sound, the attention of the sky.
Now?
Youâre horizontal. Heavy. Crushed under your own history. Some version of yourself, soaked through and softened by years of salt and silence. Saltwater did this to youâover years, probably. Or maybe it happened all at once.
You feel it still, etched behind your sternum, where breath gets tight and sharp, where salt scrapes at soft tissue like a hand pressed too hard against your lungs.
You donât even know how long youâve been here. Couldâve been weeks. Couldâve been your whole fucking life.
It doesnât matter.
Youâre still here, which is its own kind of miracle, I guess. Being a carcass of that memory. And even that might be generous. Your surface is cracked in these deep, wiry linesâthe kind you donât get from age. But the kind you get from being fractured too many times.
The kind you get from enduring.
People walk by sometimes. Bare feet. Dog leashes. Cheap sunglasses.
They glance for a second. Maybe they wonder if youâd make a nice photo. But they donât see you. Not really. Not the way you used to be. Not what you survived to still be here.
The tide left, and it hasnât come back.
You keep thinking it will. It always comes back, doesnât it?
Is it a lie?
The one that keeps you above the mud instead of under it. Because sometimesâsometimesâthe sea gets close. Close enough that you can smell it again.
Brine. Rust. Blood.
Mmm.
Something sharp is sticking to the back of your throat and lingers there. It stings a little. Leaves a film on your tongue like old pennies or regret.
You can hear it too, but itâs not waves. Itâs breath. Slow. Heavy. Like something huge is just out of sight, inhaling through its teeth and forgetting to let go.
Thatâs the worst part. The holding.
Nothing moves. No water. No footfall. Just the slow bruise of time. The tide holds its breath, and you hold yours with it. Waiting. Hoping itâll exhale and drag you out with it.
Not to save you. You gave up on that a while ago. Just to move you. To remind you youâre not a rock. Youâre not a corpse. Youâre still capable of being taken somewhere else.
But it doesnât. Not yet.
So, you unwillingly stay. And things start living on you.
Tiny shells.
Spirals of soft-bodied things cling to you like forgotten memories. Their weight is minute, but cumulative. The slow ache of permanence.
Skin doesnât bruise anymore, it thickens, peels, accepts.
You donât even know what they are. Little creatures inside, some still alive somehow. They donât ask for permissionâthey just find cracks and settle in. Like youâre just some broken piece of landscape they now call home.
Some never plan to leave. Shelter for lives that still get to go on. They donât hurt, not really. But you feel them. All the time.
Some days theyâre kind of beautiful, like they trust you. Other days, theyâre just reminders that youâre backgroundâan extra for something elseâs life. A setting for something elseâs survival.
And maybe thatâs fine.
Or maybe it sucks. You resent them for that. And then you feel guilty. You donât know which feeling is more honest.
You havenât really decided in this game of reminders of what youâre not. You donât even know if the shells and their hidden creatures know theyâve built their lives on something that used to matter.
You remember rain. Cold on skin, not soul.
You remember someone pulling you out of it once, just for a moment. Their fingers were warm. Not gentle. But deliberate.
You thought that meant something. It didnât. And thatâs fine. Or maybe it isnât.
You ever wait so long for something that when it finally comes back, youâre scared it wonât recognise you? Maybe it does and itâs giving you a new purposeâa new life.
Wouldnât that be something.
Sometimes you want to shake them off. Scream. Scrub yourself raw until blood floods the ground. But you donât. You canât. And the worst part is youâre not sure if you would, even if you could.
You wanted to be shelter once. Now youâre just scenery. Now you barely feel them. I donât know if thatâs numbness or mercy.
Go on then, sand â grind. Iâve more edges than youâve patience.
The muddy sand is cold, dense, it presses up around your edges, slow and insistent, like itâs trying to claim you inch by inch.
It finds your soft places firstâthe joints, the hollows beneath ribs, the stretch of throat where breath curls small.
Pressure builds like sleep creeping up the spine. Like itâs trying to swallow you back into something quieter. Something less visible.
Like itâs whispering:
âLet me take you back. Just rest. Just stop.â
And sometimes you want that. Not in a poetic way.
In a:
âLet-this-be-fucking-over kind of way.â
Itâs not fast. Itâs not violent. Itâs just sure.
A heat flash, sudden, alienâwarmth rolling off a dropped clamshell takeaway box, its half-congealed kebab and cheesy chips slathered in mint and chilli sauce steaming in the chill sea breeze.
Like itâs been waiting too. Like it knows youâll give in eventually. You can feel it in your jointsâif you even have joints anymore. Feel it in the way the cold seeps through you and doesnât leave.
The way the wet reaches up and kisses your ribs, soft and slow, like itâs saying:
âIâve got you now. You can rest.â
And, some days? That doesnât sound so bad. That doesnât sound so bad at all.
Youâre tired. Not tired like you need a nap. Not tired like you had a long day.
Youâre bone-tired. Soul-tired.
The marrow itself feels waterlogged. Limbs swollen with stillness. Hunger long gone, replaced by something colder gnawing under the skin. Not hunger for foodâhunger for ending. The kind of tired that makes you forget what standing up even feels like.
You donât want to fight. You just want it to be quiet. You want the ache to stop echoing. Youâd let yourself sink if not for this stubborn instinct to stay above the surface.
To breathe, even if youâre not sure what for.
You wonder if this is how drowning really startsânot with water, but with waiting.
People pass. They always do.
Typical, init?
Crowdâll clock a lost shoe quicker than a lost soul. You can hear them. A few look. Fewer stop.
Laughter. Plastic bags rustling. Phones buzzingâ these things canât live more than a breath without a phone anymore. Eventually you stop looking back. You already know how the story goes in the lives of zombies.
Youâre not a person to them. Youâre just debris. A curiosity. A dead thing. Something that washed up, dried out, and got stuck just like them. Maybe someone takes a photo.
Maybe they post it later with some caption like:
âFound art.â
Fuck that.
But thatâs not the whole truth. You were never found.
You were left.
Left to drift. Left to soften. Left to split in places no one can see. To move. Even when it doesnât look like it.
And sometimes, just sometimes, something builds a life on it. Finds shelter in it. Like those little shells, those tiny survivors who donât know theyâve latched onto something thatâs still figuring out what it is, what it wants to be, if it wants to keep going at all.
So maybe youâre not just wreckage. Not quite rebirth.
Somewhere in between.
Maybe youâre a kind of ruin. Not shelter. Not home. Just enough shape left to hold the living.
A place where things can live, if only for a while. Maybe being stuck isnât the same as being useless. Maybe youâre not dead yet.
Youâre just tired of being the thing people donât see unless they trip over you.
Still youâre waiting. Still hoping that the tide remembers you. Still hoping itâll come back and see you. Not rescue. Not redemption.
Just recognition.
Just one second where the sea says;
âI didnât forget you.â
You know itâs not coming soon. You canât tell if that feels like hope or cruelty. But hopeâs a parasite too.
It feeds off the parts of you that canât stop looking at the horizon like somethingâs owed to you just because you stayed.
But you didnât stay.
You got fucking stuck.
You want to be angry. You want to care. But what youâve got left is silence. The kind that holds your bones still in the salt and tells you that stillness is safer than sound. The kind that wraps around your ribs and pretends to be peace.
But itâs not. Itâs rot. Itâs slow. Itâs patient.
Itâs the kind of silence that hums with memory, with all the voices that used to fill you. Your own, mostly.
Before it got so damn loud in your head that you finally shut up and let the bullshit of world move on around you.
So, you lie there. You listen to the breathing ocean. You feel the shell creatures shifting on your surface. And beneath all that, you feel the ache sinking deeper.
Not pain anymore. Just the hum of something old finding bone. And you wonder if the next tide will take you, or just rise enough to remind you it still could.
Silence counts backwards. Everything about this place is almost.
The waves almost reach you.
The wind almost cools you.
The sun almost warms you, but mostly it just scorches the top layer, while its light plays across your surface, deepening shadows in your grain.
Texturing with time, tension, trauma.
Every knot is a story you forgot how to tell. There was one knot in particular, once. Right below your collarbone. Thatâs where the voice hit you.
You remember that. The crack that didnât heal right. You think it said:
âwhy do you always make it so hard to love you?â
And you didnât know how to answer. You still donât. No one tells you that being broken open isnât always a metaphor. Sometimes itâs just what happens when pressure wins. Water, salt, time. Thatâs all it takes.
Sometimes, when the sun burns low and sideways across the beach, you think you see your own reflection in the wood. Like your face got carved into the grain when you werenât looking.
Knots shaped like eyes. A split shaped like a mouth that never really opens. You stare too long and it starts looking back. You blink. Still there. Maybe thatâs all memory really is.
Damage left behind in strange shapes.
A ghost pressed shallow into the surface.
A face you thought you forgot, until the light showed you otherwise.
Damage that shapes your thoughts when the light hits just right.
You used to stand. You swear you did. And now?
Now you measure time in rot.
You measure silence by how many shells settle in overnight. You donât know if itâs morning or evening anymore, you just know when the light shifts and the cold changes sides.
A ringtone drifts from a drowned phone, bubbling up a tinny pop song;
âShake It Off,â of all things!
Like someoneâs smug prescription to just be happy.
Sometimes you think you hear footsteps. Thatâs when the pretending starts. You tense. You imagine flexing invisible fingers, rolling onto your side, pushing yourself upright.
You imagine looking human again. Fixing your face. Scraping the sea-scum from your ribs. Practicing a version of your voice that doesnât shake when you say, Iâm fine.
But no oneâs coming. No oneâs talking to you. Youâre not a person anymore. Youâre a landscape feature. Youâre a story someone else will make up later.
But you used to tell your own stories. You used to have endings that belonged to you. Real stories and endings. Now, even the myths about you arenât yours.
A voice. Not yours.
Hey, youâre quiet. Are you okay?
For a second, youâd forgotten how much that question hurt.
âOkayâ says too much.
Too big a word for what was going on inside.
You remember saying:
âIâm just tired.â
A lie.
But it worked.
People love that lie.
It gives them permission to stop asking.
You wonder how much of you is still tree.
If someone scraped off the barnacles, peeled back the algae, cracked you open like a ribcage. What would they find?
Anything still alive?
Any rings of growth?
Any memory of reaching for the sun?
Or just hollow?
Just damp pulp?
Just softened marrow where strength used to sit?
Just half-remembered sounds trapped in the grain?
Maybe you were never a tree at all. Maybe thatâs the story you wrapped around yourself to survive being horizontal. Maybe you were always something waiting to be moved. Something weightless. Something easy to discard.
People donât come back for driftwood.
They leave it. They let it bleach and splinter, let the sea use it until it forgets what it was meant to be.
You feel heavier lately. Not from the water.
From everything thatâs settled in you. Things you didnât ask to carry, guilt that isnât yours, names that were whispered then abandoned, glances that almost saw you.
You used to think being broken meant people would handle you gently. There was a time someone raised their voice and you shattered.
Now they could scream your name for hours and you wouldnât blink. Thereâs power in that. Or maybe just rot.
They donât. They either step around you or use you as a bench. Youâre not fragile. Youâre furniture.
Something creaked in you that night. Not loud. Just enough. A seam split. The ache radiates outward from the break, like warmth leaking from a cracked tooth. A quiet groan through the centre of your chest like something soft finally giving.
Pain isnât sharp anymore. It blooms slow, gentle, deliberate, like rot choosing where to start. You donât know if it was relief or warning. You donât know if itâs finished yet.
One of the shells moved today. You felt it. This tiny tremor through your core like something digging deeper, making room. They live in you now, these creatures.
They never asked. They never had to. You were available. Still. Easy. They took up space and called it shelter.
Sometimes you think they trust you. Other times, you know they donât see you at all. They think youâre dead. And maybe theyâre right.
The tide comes close again.
Not rushing in. Not washing over. Just brushing you, deliberate.
It touches the skin of you like fingers pressing into an old bruise, testing whether thereâs still blood beneath.
You feel it. You know it.But itâs not the tide watching anymore. It's them. The ones passing. Reading. Recording.
They didnât save you. They didnât leave. Theyâre just standing there. Still. Pretending not to see you. Calling this story. Like that makes it okay.
Itâs different this time. Not water. Not breath. Not sky. But presence.
You donât move. You donât speak. But you feel it recognise you. Not as rescue. Not as forgiveness.
Just. There you are. Still here.
And that almost breaks you.
The sea lingers. A small wave kisses your side, pulls back. Not claiming. Just checking. You can feel it testing your edges, the way the cold presses into your cracks and waits.
It doesnât need to speak.
You already know what itâs saying. You were supposed to go by now. Supposed to drift. Dislodge. Become something else.
But you stayed. You always stay. Even nowâsoaked, split, and half-sunkâyou stay. Still watching. Still waiting. Still listening for something that might never come again.
Maybe thatâs all you are now. Not wreckage. Not rebirth.
Just witness. Just something that remembers, even when nothing speaks your name aloud. Just something that knows too much and says nothing.
The shells shift. The sand tightens. The silence thickens. And the sea doesnât leave you. Not this time. It retreats, but it keeps watching. You feel it. You know it. Thatâs the worst part.
Not the stillness.
Not even the rot.
The worst part is knowing something remembers you. And is choosing not to return.
Not yet.
Youâre not alone. Youâre just early. Tonight, the moon hauls the tide an inch higher than yesterday. A hairline crack under your ribs answers with a sound you donât recognise. Yet!
No one is coming. This is the blessing."
â From a fractured prayer