What the Cartographer Left Unnamed

He drew the coastline from memory, not from measurement, and so it curved where grief curved, swelled where the harbor smelled of salt and his mother's bread.

The inland lakes he made too deep. He had no instrument for depth— only the sensation of standing in cold water past the point where the bottom should have been.

There are mountains on his map that exist only as the blue shadow a mountain casts on the valley floor when the sun falls away in October.

He left the center blank. Not from forgetting— he knew exactly what was there, he simply had no symbol for it, no color in the legend, no agreed-upon name.

When they found the map after, they called the blank space an error. They filled it with their own rivers, their own towns with their own names. It held none of his weight.