The Cartographer of Fallen Light

In the attic of evening, I unroll a sky creased by old winds, salt still in its corners. The window is a quiet mouth, sipping dusk, and the city, below, hums like a held note.

I map the places light went after leaving: the bruise on a stair, the copper on a kettle, the fence post that keeps the shape of noon. Each pin is a small apology to time.

Somewhere a sparrow turns the gutter into river, and the last bus draws a seam through rain. My hands smell of paper and a distant storm, my pencil, a thin mast among the shadows.

By midnight I have a world of vanished angles, a chart for the ships of tomorrow's eyes. I fold it and feel the room breathe back, as if the dark itself were a compass.