The Cartographer of Dreams

The ink bleeds into the parchment, unfolding coastlines that never touched the salt, where mountains rise from the memory of a sigh and rivers run backwards toward the start of a thought.

Here, the compass needle spins in a fever, unbound by the iron pull of the north, pointing instead to the scent of rain on a dusty road or the way a name feels when it’s almost forgotten.

He traces the archipelago of things left unsaid, naming every island after a shadow he once knew, until the paper is heavy with the weight of sleep and the map is the only world left to inhabit.