What the Cartographer Left Unnamed

There are rivers on old maps that have no names, only the blue ink of someone's hand following a path they must have walked.

My grandmother kept a jar of buttons sorted by no principle I could find— bone, shell, the dark horn of a coat she never described to anyone.

The cartographer moves through the valley before the valley has a word for itself. He draws the bend where water slows and something in him knows to leave it blank.

I have forgotten the sound of her voice but not the way she opened the jar— lid set aside, one finger tracing the surface, as if she were reading the map of a country whose name she had not yet decided.