Cartographer of Rain

In the dry season I draw the river from memory, its absent spine a pencil of dust. The marketplace is a drumhead of heat, and every stall is a closed eye.

Then the first cloud arrives like a slow animal, breathing shade through the alleys. I unroll the old paper, thin as onion skin, and listen for the first pinprick on tin.

Rain writes in a script no one teaches me, ink pooling in the gutters' cursive. Children lift their faces, baptismed in silver, while my hands learn new coastlines.

By night the streetlights are islands in vapor, and I am mapping the country of sound: the hiss of roofs, the alto of palms, the river returning, unashamed and wide.