The Cartographer's Daughter

She inherited her father's hands, the ones that traced coastlines with the patience of water wearing stone.

Now she maps the country of his forgetting— which name falls first, which river he can no longer find its mouth.

She draws the borders he is losing: here the kitchen, here the door to morning, here the window where the light still comes.

Some territories resist the pen. She leaves them white, the cartographer's confession that the land exists beyond what we can name.

At night she folds the pages into birds and lets them go. They know the way back better than either of them.