What the Cartographer Left Out

The old map stops at the edge of the marsh where someone drew a line and called it the end of the known world.

Beyond that mark, my grandmother walked anyway — her boots sinking soft into the peat, reeds splitting the grey light around her.

She named things the cartographer never bothered: the stone that holds heat past dark, the place where herons wait with the patience of unopened letters.

All of it gone now to official silence, the marsh itself drained and replanted, its water pressed somewhere underground still moving, still looking for the sea.

I carry the map she drew in her hands — not paper, nothing I could unfold — just the way she tilted her head when something was worth remembering.