The Cartographer's Last Map

She drew the coastline from memory — each inlet a parenthesis, each headland a held breath.

The ink spread where her hand shook and she let it, called it estuary, called it the place where rivers forget their names.

There were cities she erased not because they had fallen but because she could no longer bear their distances from each other.

The legend listed everything twice: what the land was called and what she had called it in the dark, before she knew it could be taken from her.

She folded it finally along creases that had never been roads, tucked it where the blank spaces go — that white margin that outlasts all the territories.