The Cartography of Waiting

The garden gate hangs loose on its hinges, a mouth that cannot quite close. In the space between rust and recall, I map the small countries of shadow.

Your footprints fade on the worn stones— not erased, but translated into the grammar of moss and time. The air holds what we didn't say.

Somewhere a window opens. Somewhere the maples refuse to turn. I've learned that staying is a form of motion, that the heart has borders we cannot cross.

The morning light finds its way in anyway, indifferent, patient, geometric. It knows nothing of us, yet arranges everything we've left behind into order.