Weather Map for an Uninvented Coast

I found a coast that only exists in forecasts— lightning stitched into the margins of a chart, wind arrows leaning like grasses in a field a cartographer never walked.

There, the tide rehearses its arrivals in silence, curling and un-curling at the edge of ink. A lighthouse is just a rumor of glass, a word that tastes of salt and far receipts.

Each wave writes its name on a different shore, then erases itself with a careful palm. The gulls are commas in a sentence of cloud, and the sand keeps a ledger of absent feet.

I fold the map and the room grows quiet; outside, the real rain is a slow percussion. What the weather predicted in symbols arrives as water on my hand.