The Cartographer's Last Map

She drew the borders of her childhood in ink that bled when the river changed its mind— all those careful names for where the herons stood now floating past the edge of the page.

The mountain range she rendered with a trembling hand still holds its shape, though no road climbs it now. Between the contour lines: the smell of pine, a dog barking somewhere inside the elevation.

What use is a map of a place that breathes? The legend cannot account for grief, for how the old house shifted north in the year her mother stopped sleeping.

She folds it finally along its creases— the peninsula of her girlhood tucked against the inlet where her father fished— and sets it in the drawer with the others she has memorized by forgetting.