A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas,

but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in.

With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up.

The green smear of the woods we first made love in.

The yellow city we thought was our future.

The red highways not traveled, the green ones

with their missed exits, the black side roads

which took us where we had not meant to go.

The high peaks, recorded by relatives,

though we prefer certain unmarked elevations,

the private alps no one knows we have climbed.

The careful boundaries we draw and erase.

And always, around the edges,

the opaque wash of blue, concealing

the drop-off they have stepped into before us,

singly, mapless, not looking back.

--Lisel Mueller