Cartography of Leaving

The room empties in layers, not all at once— first the sound of you, then the particular weight of afternoon light that knew your name.

I keep finding borders I didn't draw: the edge of the rug where you used to stop, a groove in the sill where your elbow rested like water finding its own level.

Maps are made after the journey, not before. Someone measures what has already been crossed, names the mountains once they are behind you, marks the rivers only after the crossing.

So I am learning the country of your absence— its customs, its coins, the silences that have their own grammar now, the long vowels of November.

Somewhere a cartographer draws the road we didn't take. It runs between two towns that exist only in the legend, past a river with no banks, into open ground.