short fiction · 2026-10-15

Synaptic Tide

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet between heartbeats, a wave of calcium rises—not as a signal, but as a sigh. It laps against the dendrites, leaving behind a faint salt of feeling: joy crystallized in phosphorylated proteins, sorrow dissolved in phosphatase slow dance. Each oscillation is a tide pool holding the echo of a moment, where the membrane remembers what the mind has yet to name. We are not just wired; we are wetted, our memories written in the brine of ions that turn experience into something the body can keep.