Cartography of the Unremembered

The road I drove as a child has been resurfaced twice, the cracks I memorized filled in like old arguments smoothed down to nothing.

Somewhere a version of the orchard still exists— the low branch I swung from, the grass below worn soft by every child who trusted the same improbable arc.

I keep a map of where things were. Not accurate, not to scale. The distances between the houses lengthen every year as if absence itself has weight.

My grandmother's kitchen smelled of anise and something I have never named, a warmth that lived in the walls and left when she did, following her the way light follows a door.

What we lose, we make a country of. Give it a name no one else pronounces right. Return to it at night by roads the map no longer shows, arriving, always, just too late.