The Cartographer's Last Survey

She drew the coastline from memory, the harbor mouth where fog collects like wool caught on a wire fence, the rocks that breathe at low tide.

Her instruments had rusted into honesty— no longer able to insist on right angles, they curved now the way old hands curve around what they refuse to let go.

The inland rivers she knew by sound, the particular argument of water with a limestone bed, the shush of reed beds in October wind.

She left the center of the map blank. Not undiscovered—she had been there, stood in the field of tall grass that neither asked for nor needed a name.

When they found her desk, the final sheet held only the margins: every border, every edge, the places where things end and become something else entirely.