What the Cartographer Left Unnamed

At the edge of the surveyed land she drew a line and stopped, left the rest to hearsay and fog.

The unnamed valley floods each spring. No one has thought to measure it. Sedge grows where the water pulls back, and the birds call it by a sound no tongue can hold.

I have driven the gravel road that ends there, watched the cattails lean into their own reflections, felt the peculiar weight of being in a place that has never been declared.

My father knew a name for it once— something his mother used, something older than the county, worn smooth as riverstones. When he died the word went with him into uncharted ground.

Now I stand where the map goes white and name nothing, only look, the way you look at a face you already know and find you have forgotten nothing, and will never have it back.