What If Salt Could Forget

What if salt forgot it was once ocean. Not dissolved, not washed away: just genuinely unable to recall the weight of water pressing down on it from above. It would still sit on the wooden table. It would still find the cut on your finger with its usual accuracy. But the crystal would hold a different kind of stillness, not the stillness of something that has survived, but the stillness of something that never left anywhere at all. A grain with no history still seasons the broth. The broth does not know the difference. This is either a comfort or the most precise description of loss available in a kitchen.