The Cartographer of Wind

In the attic of the year, he unfurls a paper sky, thumbtacks the corners to the rafters, listens as the house becomes a throat for weather, its breath a compass without a needle.

He inks the paths the unseen takes— how it climbs the orchard, pauses at stone, how it braids the clothesline into a song and teaches the sheets to improvise.

At dusk, the map glows with charcoal rivers, the gusts he never saw, the ones he felt as a child leaning into wheat, learning that a field can speak without a mouth.

He rolls the sky back into its tube, labels it "Morning" and "After the Train," knowing every route is a kind of keeping, a way to hold what refuses to be held.