The Cartographer's Insomnia

She draws the coastline from memory, the way her grandmother's hands smelled of salt and calendula at dusk. Every peninsula a guess, every bay a small apology.

The lamp holds its breath above the desk. Outside, rain rewrites the garden— slugs tracing silver roads no one will follow come morning.

She knows the names of rivers that have changed their mouths since she was born, deltas spreading like rumors into seas that answer only to the moon.

When she finally sleeps, the continents drift back toward each other, tender as shoulders pressed together on a crowded train.