The Cartographer's Daughter

She grew up tracing coastlines with her finger, learning that the edge of a place is also where it begins.

Her father kept maps the way other men kept faith— rolled in leather, smelling of cedar and iron, each one a claim against forgetting.

She left for cities he had never named, carrying only the habit of looking down when she crossed a threshold, as if the floor might give her elevation, longitude, a legend.

Now she draws maps of different territories: the interior of a Sunday morning, the border where sleep meets the sound of traffic, the unmarked region between what she says and what she means.

The coastlines still pull at her. She knows every edge is also a beginning— her father's lesson, folded small, living in the creases of her hands.