The Cartographer's Last Survey

She measures the distance between two mountains with the width of her thumb, finds it equal to her mother's face.

The river has moved again. It does this quietly, like an old argument that settles into new ground overnight.

She draws the bend where it was last August, a ghost-line in softer pencil, the honest map and the true one layered.

At the edge of the paper, her own coastline— where land gives up its claim and the water begins to name itself.

She folds the survey into quarters, tucks it inside her coat. The territory does not wait to be recorded.