Mental Health
Cartography
Someone has been redrawing the geography of my mind. Roads that once led home now end at cliffs. Every bridge wears the same handwritten sign. Unsafe. The forests have grown differently. They no longer shelter birds. Only echoes. Only branches that resemble reaching hands if I look at them after midnight. There is a coastline I cannot explain. Each morning the sea retreats a little farther, taking with it a name, a certainty, the version of myself who believed arrival was inevitable. I have searched for the country I remember becoming. Its houses still appear in dreams, their windows warm, their doors unlocked, their light unafraid of darkness. But every compass I carry spins whenever I get close. Perhaps anxiety is not a monster. Perhaps it is a cartographer. Patient. Meticulous. It never burns the world. It simply redraws it until every horizon looks like a warning. Still, there are mistakes even careful mapmakers make. Yesterday, I laughed before remembering I was supposed to be afraid. A flower grew through concrete without consulting the blueprint. Rain crossed every border that fear had carefully inked. Tonight I will unfold my own map. Untidy. Coffee-stained. Incomplete. I will leave blank spaces where certainty demands a conclusion. After all, every explorer has mistaken an ocean for the edge of the earth.
By Aarsh Malik2 months ago in Poets
