The Cartographer of Small Hours

At three a.m. the kitchen becomes a country with its own weather, its own borders of linoleum. The refrigerator hums a lullaby it learned from a mother it never had.

I am mapping the distance between the chair and the window, between the glass of water and the wanting. Each step a latitude. Each breath a dotted line across an unnamed sea.

The moon has misplaced its keys again. It leaves them in puddles, in the curve of a spoon, in the hollow my cheek made on the pillow before I rose to learn the floor by heart.

Somewhere a train is pulling its long vowel through a town that has already forgiven it. I set my palm against the cool tile and listen for the rooms I have not yet walked into, for the morning rehearsing its small, forgivable light.