2.22.22

What's next: places the map is making room for. The stormy sea. The map thinks, approximates the route from here to there. There's a sense that something is coming and when. But how is puzzling. There are traces of footprints in the sand just ahead, from somebody else who has been this way before. Just ahead, maybe some piles of rocks facing in a direction the map can't quite make out. The compass is broken. This map has never been quite good with direction. It used to plot in the direction of whoever it was making its way to. But for some time, there has been nobody else. There's the sound of waves crashing on the shore, the most quiet, deafening sound in the world. It puts you to sleep and wakes you up into somewhere else. How to measure the distances that must be crossed. Underfoot there are poems. Once this map read a poem in Japanese on a wall of a place they loved. The poem carved into that wall read: “Dandelion flowers / How many good friends of mine / Sleep here, I wonder.”