The Cartographer's Last Map

She drew the coastlines from memory, knowing the sea had already moved on— her pen tracing what the water used to say before it learned a different grammar.

The mountains were easier. They held their shapes across a lifetime, though she knew even stone surrenders slowly, grain by grain, to the patience of wind.

She marked the towns she'd loved in red, small circles where meaning had gathered like heat above asphalt in August, wavering, refusing to settle.

What remains when the key is lost— when the legend fades and no one knows if red meant warmth or warning, if the dotted line was road or river?

She folded the map along its original creases, pressed it between two books that never open, and left the blank edges for whoever comes next with a fresh name for the sea.