The Cartographer's Grief

She mapped the coastline after her father died, drawing each inlet by hand, the way he taught her, letting the pen hesitate where the shore did.

She named the coves for what she couldn't keep — the one where he laughed at a bad joke, still laughing, the one where the heron lifted without warning.

Cartography is a kind of staying. She pressed the nib harder along the headlands, insisting the water stay where she had seen it.

But maps are also confessions: the blank interior, the edge that says here the known world ends, here I stopped looking.

She rolled the paper slowly, the coast still wet, and placed it in the drawer where he kept string and matches, where ordinary things outlast the hands that touched them.