The Cartographer's Last Map

She drew the coastlines from memory, each bay a held breath, the peninsula curling like a question she had stopped asking.

The mountains were easy — grief always knows where height begins. She gave them names from her childhood: the one that meant *shelter*, the one that meant *run*.

She left the interior blank. Not because she didn't know it but because some places collapse under the weight of being named.

At the border she drew a single road leading off the edge of the paper, then put down her pen and listened to the silence it made.

When they found the map they called it unfinished. She would have called it honest.