The Cartographer's Last Survey

She measured grief in contour lines, the way terrain refuses to be flat when you need passage.

Each valley she had loved left its own isobar of pressure— the low front that never lifts, the weather station reporting only silence.

Her instruments were good: a compass that still pointed toward the house that wasn't there, a ruler calibrated in years.

She drew the coastline anyway, knowing the sea revises everything, that no map survives the places it was made for.

At the legend she paused— what symbol stands for gone, for the small country you carried in your chest until your chest forgot the borders?