The Cartographer of Quiet

In a room where the radiator hums like a distant hive, I unroll a map that has no cities, only pale rivers of thought sketched in ash, and the small compass of my breath trembles.

Outside, streetlights lean into fog, each one a lantern held by an unseen cartographer; their circles of light overlap and fade, teaching the night to speak in soft ellipses.

I mark the places where grief once settled, not as mountains but as weather moving through, a low pressure that gentles the air and passes, leaving the fields to rewild with quiet.

By morning, the map folds itself like a leaf. I carry it in my pocket, warm from walking, and every step redraws the border of being here, a country made of listening.