The Cartographer's Insomnia

She draws coastlines in the dark, her pencil tracing shores no satellite has named.

The archipelago on the left is where her mother used to hum— three islands, each a different key.

She marks the inland cities by what they smelled like: gasoline and cardamom, woodsmoke, the sea. Somewhere a river bends toward a city she has left too often.

Some territories stay blank. Not unknown— she knows them perfectly. She simply hasn't found the symbol that means grief.

At dawn the map rolls shut. She slides it into a tube beside all the others, each one a year, each year a country she can't visit anymore.