Cartographer of Unwritten Roads

I fold a city from old receipts, crease-lines turning into rivers and alleys, inked with the coffee-stain moons that used to rise over late buses.

A compass hums in my palm, soft as a bee, its needle twitching toward a smell of rain and the warm metal of subway rails— there, a future lingers like steam.

I map the blank, the places no one goes: a stair that ends in a window of light, a vacant lot where wind keeps a ledger of names the grass can still pronounce.

At dusk, I walk these drawn borders, feet crossing the paper and the street at once, until the map lifts and becomes the sky, and I am the road that keeps arriving.