The Cartographer's Insomnia

She traces coastlines in the dark, fingers moving where the lamp had been— the continent of you a rumor her palms keep trying to confirm.

Every map is a confession: here the river bent without reason, here the mountain stood and meant something, here I marked the place I could not name.

Latitude is only hunger measured in degrees from equator, and she has traveled so far north the compass lost its sense of obligation.

By morning the paper holds new creases, a legend invented in her sleep: blue for what was water, white for silence, and a red X where the expedition ended.