The Cartographer's Insomnia

She draws the coast from memory— the harbor where the ferry lists at dusk, the breakwater boys her grandmother knew before the names were changed.

Her pen finds the estuary's fork the way a tongue finds a missing tooth: by the ache of what was there, the small persistent hollow.

Some cities she renders twice. The one that stands, its new glass towers throwing light like a stranger's laughter. The one that stood, its bread-smell and its smoke.

She folds the second map and tucks it where the atlas ends, where blank pages wait for coastlines that have not yet drowned.

By morning, the ink is dry. She rolls the finished chart and does not look at what she's named the places she will not return to.