What the Cartographer Forgot

The map shows roads but not the way a road feels under wet shoes in October, the particular silence of a town that has forgotten its own name.

He drew the river twice — once where it runs, once where it used to, the ghost line faint as a scar someone stopped explaining years ago.

In the margin, an unmapped hill where the pines grow at angles the wind preferred before the mill came. No legend covers this. No symbol for what remains when the reason leaves.

At the center, a city rendered in sharp grids, every alley numbered, every crossing named — yet someone lived above the bakery forty years without once being found.

Turn the map over. The blank side holds more. Press your palm flat against it, feel how the paper has taken on warmth, the ghost-heat of wherever you have been.