The Cartographer's Confession

I drew the coastline wrong on purpose, nudged a river two degrees east to keep one village from drowning in the blue ink of accuracy.

The mountains I left where they belonged, but softened their teeth. Every survey is a small mercy, or a lie told gently to the page.

At night the compass spins inside me like a moth that has forgotten the moon. I unfold the world on the kitchen table and find my hands have aged into someone else's.

There is a country no one has mapped: the silence between two people who once shared a window. I am still trying to draw its borders in pencil, in pencil, in pencil.