The Map the Tide Left Behind

Every wave redraws the shoreline, leaving quiet instructions in its wake.

When the water finally pulled back, it did not return the world as it was. The shore had shifted ,lines carved where none had been before, sand pressed into patterns that would not wash away with the next tide.

It’s easy to think of waves as destroyers, but they are also cartographers. They leave maps in the debris, in the placement of stones, in the curve of driftwood that marks the farthest reach of the flood.

If you stand still long enough, you begin to read it ,the way the water circled here, the way it slammed straight through there, the places it spared without reason. The patterns are not for beauty; they are for understanding.

There is no rushing this kind of knowledge.

You trace the edges of what has changed, your feet sinking into new ground that has already decided what it will hold and what it will never keep again.

And in those moments, you see it clearly: the map is not for finding your way back. It is for showing you the way forward, through a landscape you would never have recognized before the tide touched it.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

This series follows the slow work of storms and tides, charting the spaces they leave behind. Tomorrow, the current turns toward what it means to rebuild in the quiet , not as it was before, but as it can be now.

After the Eye

The calm at the center is never the end, only the breath before the breaking.

The eye of the storm

is a dangerous kindness

a pause that lets you believe

the worst has passed.

But brisk breezes always comes,

and when it does,

you learn the shape of your own shelter,

the sound of your own voice

calling yourself home.

After it breaks,

you walk barefoot through the wreckage,

feeling for the edges of what’s still whole.

Not everything scattered

was worth keeping.

Not everything left standing

is meant to stay.

Sometimes survival

is not about rebuilding

it’s about learning

how to breathe

in the spaces

the wind has cleared.

~Kerri-Elizabeth-

The storms we survive are not just weather they are mirrors, showing us what cannot be moved, and what we can no longer carry. This series walks those paths, one day at a time, through the shifting light after the eye has passed. The next part waits just beyond the next gust.