The Cartographer's Insomnia

She traces coastlines on the ceiling, fingers following cracks in plaster that could be rivers, could be borders no one has agreed upon.

The atlas on the nightstand breathes— its pages lift and settle like the chest of someone dreaming of a country they invented and then lost.

Every projection is a lie, she knows. Mercator stretched the poles to breaking, made Greenland vast as Africa. What distortions do we grant the places we have loved?

There is a town she mapped at twenty, grid lines tight as stitching, each contour earned by walking. Now it lives only in the dark behind her eyelids, warm and out of scale.

Dawn arrives the way borders do— slowly, then all at once disputed. She folds her hands across her ribs and lets the unmapped hours pass.