The Cartographer's Daughter

She inherited the unfinished coastlines, her father's pencil trailing off where the water grew too sure of itself.

Every room she entered she measured in fathoms. The kitchen: one and a half. The long hall where grief collects its coats: eleven.

She learned to trust the blank spaces more than names — how a valley stays itself long after the word for it has worn smooth.

The maps he left breathed under glass, edges brown as old bread, legends that promised a north nobody reached.

She traces where his certainty ends, picks up the pencil, and begins. The shore continues under her hand.