The Cartographer of Small Hours

Before the house learns it is morning, I draw maps of rooms I no longer live in— the exact width of a threshold, the sound a faucet made when no one else was awake to hear it.

Memory is a country that keeps shrinking at the edges, coastlines softened into approximate shapes. I fold the paper wrong and it never lies flat again.

A taxi passes on the street below, its headlights crossing the ceiling like the second hand of a clock that has forgotten what it was counting toward.

By four a.m. I know the name of every shadow in this room. I have given them all the names of people I meant to call back but didn't.

Somewhere a bird tests one note against the dark, uncertain whether to continue. I wait with it, the two of us deciding together whether this is an ending or a start.