What the Cartographer Left Unnamed

She drew rivers where there were none, pressed blue ink into the skin of hills as if naming a thing could hold it still.

The valley she left blank was the one she'd walked through twice — once entering, once not returning.

Her borders followed the line of old arguments, not topography. Every mountain had a former name crossed out beneath the printed one.

I found the map in a coat I'd inherited. I traced my finger along the unnamed place and felt the paper thin, as if she'd pressed too hard trying to forget what she already knew by heart.

Distance is always a translation. What survives the crossing is not the land but the particular quality of light she must have carried home inside her eyes.