The Cartographer's Insomnia

She draws coastlines from memory, the way water once held her ankles before retreating into legend.

Each city she names twice— once for what it was, once for the silence that replaced it. The ink dries before she decides which to keep.

The room smells of cedar and altitude. Her lamp makes islands of the furniture. She measures distances in how long it takes to forget a street's particular light.

By morning, the map shows roads that lead only to other maps, borders where the parchment creases, mountains traced in what she cannot say aloud.

She folds it all into an envelope addressed to no one, then opens the window to find the horizon has moved again, considerate, quiet.