The Cartographer's Daughter

She grew up tracing borders with her finger, the paper soft as worn skin where her father's hands had pressed.

Every river was a rumor he had heard from someone who had stood at its edge and decided not to cross.

She learned the names before the places— Sarajevo, the Mekong, Tierra del Fuego— syllables that tasted of distance, of something opened and not yet closed.

When he died, the maps stayed rolled in their leather tubes like letters she could not bring herself to send. She moved through cities slowly, as if reading.

Now she keeps no maps. She says she walks to learn the shape of not-knowing, the way fog makes a city briefly honest.