Cartography of Silence

In the attic, dust is a slow snowfall, light sifts through slats like a metronome, and the old globe turns on its axis of rust, countries fading where my palms once pressed.

I spread a blank sheet and listen for bearings— the room answers with the creak of beams, a sparrow’s footfall on the tin roof, the hush that lives between clock ticks.

I draw the coast of a silence I knew, a bay shaped like your unspoken name; the tide line is a thin pencil scar that my breath keeps trying to erase.

Outside, dusk lays violet over the yard, each blade of grass a needle in velvet; the map is finished but I keep tracing, as if my finger could find a way back.