What the Cartographers Left Out

The old maps named every river but left the silences blank — the hour between the lamp going dark and the first bird saying anything.

My grandmother kept a drawer full of string too short to use. When I asked why, she looked past me at something I hadn't learned to see yet, and tied two pieces together.

The cartographers measured coastlines by walking them at low tide, so every map is a record of one particular going-out, one moment when the sea held back.

There are places I return to only in the grammar of sleep — the screen door's aluminum clatter, the smell of cut grass threaded through with diesel.

I am still learning what the silences stand for, still tying the short pieces together, still walking the edge at the hour of low water.