What the Cartographer Left Out

The old map shows a mill where the mill no longer stands, a road that ended when the levee broke, a name for a creek that locals have forgotten. Someone measured this land in good faith and the land moved on without them.

My grandmother kept a tin of buttons sorted by no system I could find — bone beside brass beside something that caught the light like a small held breath. She said she knew where each one came from. I believed her.

There is a word in the margin of the map, smudged, that might be marsh or might be church. The surveyor's hand grew cold. He was trying to say what he saw, and what he saw kept changing.

Now the creek runs where the road was. The mill is a stand of sycamore whose roots have memorized the turning of a wheel no one else remembers turning.