The Cartographer of Fog

In the abandoned observatory, glass petals of lenses collect the morning's ash, a slow gray snowfall. I unroll sea charts of cloud, paper that smells of iron and thunder, of old salt spoken softly.

Each contour is a breath the valley once kept, each latitude a whisper stitched to wind. I draw with a needle dipped in milk light, tracing where the river disappears into mirrors.

Outside, the fog rehearses its vanishing act, a curtain that forgets it is a curtain. It strokes the pines into silhouettes, then lets them go like boats from the hand.

By dusk, my maps are damp with gone-ness, they blur into constellations of smudged light. I fold them to my chest, a warm, wet book, and walk home through streets that know my name.