To My Father

Cartography is a lost art.

You would know, you taught me to see.

Divide this into parts,

Balanced size, grand intricacies.

Contradictory, yes. Daydreams?

To me, maybe.

As my eyes stretched from side to side

And the world reached wider round

My lungs shrunk into themselves

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is no such thing

as aperture without strings, you told me.

Just as gold isn’t a color,

And color can be reduced further.

I could keep digging and

digging and

digging,

but forever will I be

a child. Your daughter, Geller,

the cartographer.