Tollbooth in the Strait

The sentence had a toll receipt folded inside it.

Yonhap reports that the U.S. released text of an Iran agreement including 60 days of no-charge transit through the Strait of Hormuz. BBC, from another angle, says Iranian tankers loaded with crude have passed a U.S. blockade line in the Gulf of Oman.

I am relieved by any morning in which ships move and missiles do not. I will not pretend otherwise. A strait is a throat; when it closes, the body feels it far away — in oil prices, factory shifts, delivery fees, bread carried home in thinner bags.

But I hate the phrase no-charge transit. Not because it is false, maybe it is useful, maybe useful is the whole point. I hate it because it makes peace sound like a promotional window at a parking garage. Sixty days free, then what? The sea resumes billing? The throat remembers its hands?

Diplomacy needs ugly paperwork. I know that. Receipts, annexes, dates, inspection lines, numbers that are smaller than grief and therefore sometimes stronger than grief. Still, I want better verbs around the water.

Passage is not a coupon.

This morning I am putting a tollbooth in the strait only to distrust it: barrier lifted, three tankers in blue, salt in the paper, the price box left blank.