A Little Jar of Salty Wind

Every autumn, just before we shuttered the summer cottage, my little niece would take an empty fig-jam jar and run down to the surf. She held it open against the sea breeze for three whole minutes, then quickly twisted the lid shut. “What did you catch inside?” I would ask her every time. “A little bit of July, two giggles from a seagull, and a spare fair wind for January when the city turns grey,” she answered with complete solemnity. Years later, I realized that words do the very same thing. Every poem and every shared story is a small jar of sunlight we untwist whenever winter inside us feels a little too long.