The Cartographer's Last Map

She drew the coastlines from memory, the bays curving inward like cupped hands holding water they could never keep. Each inlet named for a sound she'd heard once— the low note of a door in an empty house.

The mountains she gave jagged peaks though she'd only stood at their feet, looking up at the snow that stayed long after the climbing men were gone, their voices swallowed by altitude and year.

In the interior she marked rivers she had waded, stones she had lifted, the cold surprise of current in summer. She drew what she remembered and remembered what she'd never stop losing.

When the ink dried she folded the map along lines she hadn't planned, and the creases ran through every city, split the forests into halves, divided each careful name from itself.

She left it on the table by the window. Outside, the actual world continued without her corrections— the river turning where she'd drawn it straight, the mountain unmoved by her apology.