The Map of Unnamed Rivers

I unroll a map that was never printed, inkless as fog, creased with the weight of hands. The paper smells of wet stone and cedar where the compass once learned to breathe.

At each blank bend, a river begins in silence, narrow as a thread pulled from a coat sleeve. It moves through towns that were only ever rumors, over bridges built from the blue of a throat.

I follow its current with a fingertip, a slow animal tracing a winter trail. The margins fill with names I almost remember, letters like minnows flashing and gone.

When I fold the map, the water keeps on, dark under the attic, under the bed of years. Somewhere it is reaching the sea of us, carrying the silt of every unspoken place.