The Cartographer's Insomnia

She draws the coastline from memory, every inlet a hesitation, the peninsula her father's name which she no longer says aloud.

The sea does not correct her. It merely continues its work— smoothing the edges of stone into shapes without history.

She marks the place where the ferry ran with a symbol meaning passage, though passage is not what she means. She means the yellow light on the water at six o'clock.

At some point the map became more real than the land. She does not travel anymore, only revises. Only refines the legend.

The blank spaces she leaves are not mistakes. They are what she knows about forgetting— how it too has borders, however unmarked.