The Cartographer's Daughter

She grew up tracing rivers with her finger, learning where the land became uncertain— those pale zones her father left unfinished, the edges where his pencil lost its nerve.

He mapped the known world into neat submission, gave names to headlands no one else had named, then came home smelling of linseed and correction fluid, his hands still trembling from the altitude.

She inherited his restlessness, not his precision. She draws the coastline wrong on purpose now, lets bays curve where they want to curve, and marks the deep water simply: here something lives that has no name yet.

What use is accuracy in a country that keeps rearranging itself? The glacier has retreated since the survey year. The town her father fixed in ink is under a reservoir.

She leaves the margins wide. She writes her questions in the sea.