The marsh keeps its own ledger,
reckoned in brackish water and dark mud.

It does not keep track of what you lost—
it only measures what sinks
and what the high water decides
to float back up.

The heron doesn’t look back as it rises,
a grey blade against a midnight sun.

It knows what the town forgets:
that some dawns don’t wait for the sky.

They come in the middle of the dark,
striking like lightning through the black rushes,
illuminating the shape of everything
you spent years trying to submerge.

You stand at the edge of the creeks
with grit beneath your nails,
wearing the Lowcountry like a wet coat.

The tide moves in, indifferent and deep,
filling the hollows, erasing the tracks,
leaving only the echo
of what was never yours to hold.

---

Ginny is a South Carolina paralegal and writer whose work explores memory, survival, place, and the histories held by Lowcountry soil and water. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Club Plum Literary Journal, FEED THE HOLY, Phenomena, Arkansas Review, and Let Me Tell You a Story. She lives in a historic home in Kingstree, South Carolina, where the marsh, river, and remnants beneath her backyard continue to shape her writing.