Notes About The Poem
The following poem was written in response to this image for an online poetry class
THE CARTOGRAPHER'S APPRENTICE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She moves where stone breathes
and city mist exhales~
an ink-fingered girl,
hungry for edges.
Her notebook fills with the ribs of bridges,
the pulse of alleys that twist like cursive,
but one corner stays blank,
haunted by the scent of thyme and whispers.
The old woman’s stall is a lung~
violet smoke curling into a man
who is not a man,
but the wind wearing memory.
Aer, she names him,
though names are nets thrown at the sky.
His voice is the hush of poplars,
his touch—the press of a breeze
against her wrist.
Together, they chart what’s hidden:
fog hugging eaves,
lanterns turning dawn
into gold.
He teaches her to listen~
not with ears, but with the spaces
between her ribs.
A ravenous storm comes
gnawing at the city’s bones.
Aer stands between her and the hunger,
his body a dune eroding,
yet he smiles~
You are the keeper now,"
he says, giving her a peacock feather.
The feather feels weightless
in her hand, but the drawer
where she places it hums
with the city’s first storm.
She writes poems to the air,
to the hollow where his laugh once lived,
and the wind answers~
not in words, but in the turn
of a page,
the lift of her hair,
a path that unwinds
into the garden of nowhere.
At midnight, the blossoms open,
each petal a ledger of light.
She marks a line with no destination,
aware that maps are not just for places,
but also for the shape of absence.
Somewhere, the wind remembers.
Somewhere, it says her name
in the language of sails.
this poem was written as part of a science fiction poetry contest; it accompanies the story "The City of Aethra" which can be read at poetrysoup.com/short_stories/city_of_aethra_13649
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