The Cartographer's Last Survey

She draws the coastline from memory now, her hands knowing the curve of the bay the way a tongue knows a missing tooth — by absence, by the shape of what was there.

The old maps curl at their edges. Somewhere, a river she charted at twenty has changed its mind about the sea, wandered inland without explanation.

She adds a note in the margin: *approximate*. Everything she touches becomes approximate — the villages, the roads, the names people gave to ordinary hills.

At dusk she folds the paper carefully, leaves a blank square where the harbor was, where light used to pool between the boats like something almost worth believing.

She will fill it in tomorrow, or she won't. The white space holds its breath.