Mapping Nights

I float through the apartment
the way a half-drowned memory moves through a mind
slow
insubstantial
still dangerous if you get too close.

They’re all sleeping.

Wife folded into her dream-rituals
dog muttering occasionally in her small dusk language
and the child
my child
a quiet comet fallen into blankets
cheek flushed with the uncomplicated trust
I lost somewhere in my twenties
or earlier
depending on which version of the story I pick.

I stand in her doorway and muse
there are rooms only mothers can enter
and chambers only women who have burned themselves down
and built new names in the ashes
can survive.

This night
this nothing-special night
becomes a kind of map
one of those ancient ones
drawn on scraped hide and human stubbornness
where the edges read
here there be monsters.

Monsters born mostly of me, to be honest.

The shame
the one that flickers like a neon sign from the old world
says
you were feral once
you were reckless
you were open to everything
like your skin was a border no one checked
and sometimes you still miss it
the speed
the salt
the ruin.

The desire
that stubborn cartographer
keeps sketching you in red
marking the places you touched
and the places you wanted to
and the ones you walked away from
because even hunger needs rest
eventually.

Becoming
that strange faultline
runs right through your ribs
splitting the girl you were
the woman you pretend to be
the creature you allow yourself to become
when the moon is too bright
or the vodka too honest
or the loneliness decides to speak.

Silence
the old geography
sits in your throat
an entire city of unsaid things
humming like faulty wiring
because mothers don’t get to confess
that sometimes they feel too full
or too empty
or too wrong
for the life they built.

And loss
persistent old bastard
is everywhere
in the bodies you no longer inhabit
in the nights you survived
in the people who mistook you for salvation
in the selves you killed
so you could become
a gentler danger.

I circle her bed
soft
careful
as if stepping through a constellation you could break by breathing wrong.

Her hand twitches.
Her lip curls.
Some dream tugs her deeper.
The room smells of childhood
that impossible fragrance
equal parts future and fossils.

I look at her
and suddenly every version of me
every wild year
every stranger’s sheets
every club bathroom mirror where I looked like a myth made of exhaustion
every knife-edge decision
every moment I thought
I won’t make it through this
all of it orbits her
like debris caught in a gravity stronger than regret.

What if she becomes me.

The question arrives
uninvited
as all dangerous questions do.

What if she inherits my maps
my broken compasses
my lust for implosion
my tenderness so sharp it cuts
my inability to sleep
on nights when the past starts whispering in a language only my bones understand.

I lay a hand near her head
not touching
just tracing
because motherhood is a long apprenticeship in not hurting the world you brought into being.

I think
if she becomes me
she will also become everything I never let myself be
because children steal the version of the future you’re too cowardly to touch
and live it without asking permission.

I think
if she becomes me
she will crawl out of every ruin
laughing
because she’ll see all the exits I never noticed.

I think
if she becomes me
she will hold her own daughter one day
and orbit the sleeping body
and wonder
terrified and tender
how something so small could command the tides of your entire life.

I stand there
long enough for the cold to bite my ankles
long enough for the shame to quiet
for desire to retreat
for becoming to soften
for silence to unclench
for loss to loosen its teeth.

When I finally turn away
the night feels mapped.
Not clearly
not neatly
but truthfully.

And truth
even when jagged
is a kind of mercy.

I slip back into the dark hallway
a woman carrying five maps inside her
and all of them lead
here.