The Cartographer's Last Shore

She folds the coastline into quarters, tucks the estuary under her thumb. Every inlet she named is still breathing somewhere in the linen of that page.

The tide has eaten three villages since. Sand moves the way grief moves— slowly, then all at once, filling the rooms you thought were solid.

She draws the new shore with a steadier hand than the one that drew the old. Accuracy is just a record of what you were willing to lose.

At the edge of the paper, a margin of white she never marks. Not ocean, not land— the space where the map admits it does not know what comes next.