The Cartographer's Last Room

She mapped every room she had ever left — the kitchen where the radiator ticked like a second heart, the stairwell that smelled of woodsmoke and old argument.

Her instruments were imprecise. The living room kept drifting east. The hallway shortened every time she drew it, as though the house were breathing itself smaller.

Some maps she made from sound alone: the specific creak of a third step, rain against a skylight in a city she could no longer name.

On her final sheet she drew only a door. No threshold, no room beyond — just the shape of standing at the edge of what you cannot go back to.

She hung it where the window had been. In the morning light it looked like a question. By evening it looked like an answer.