The Cartographer's Insomnia

She draws coastlines from memory, the shoreline of her mother's collarbone, the inlet where laughter used to pool before the tide changed its mind.

Every room she has ever left becomes a country on her tongue— the kitchen with its copper light, the hallway that smelled of cedar and old news, the bed that held her like a theorem.

She cannot sleep because the map keeps growing: new borders declared at 3 a.m., unnamed rivers cutting through years she hadn't meant to lose.

The legend says: here be grief. But she draws it anyway, ink still wet where her pen lifts, the blank space at the edge not emptiness—just the part she hasn't reached yet.