The Cartographer's Confession

I drew the river wrong on purpose, bent it south where your house used to stand, let the blue ink pool in the margin like rain collecting in a doorframe no one walks through anymore.

The surveyors will find discrepancies— a hill where the floodplain should be, contour lines that stutter and repeat the way your voice did when you said the word permanent.

I have been faithful to the roads, the rail crossings, the elevation marks. But where the orchard was I placed a lake, bottomless and unnamed, because some absences demand water.

They will call it an error. They will print corrections on translucent overlays and hold them to the light. But the light will pass through and the land beneath will remain as I made it—

tender, rearranged, a country only two people could ever navigate.