Cartography of Dust

The attic opens like a slow book, light sifts through rafters in thin, mute ribbons, and every beam is a longitude of dust taking notes on my breath.

I find a suitcase of winter coats, their pockets still remembering keys, their wool a dusk where moths once wrote their brief, alphabetic circles.

Outside, a freight train leans on the horizon, a long iron sentence breaking into smoke; the sound shakes loose old street names I did not know I carried.

I sweep, and the broom lifts a weather, a small storm of what was touched and kept; the map I leave behind is only air learning the shape of my hands.