“More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.”

– Elizabeth Bishop, The Map (1935)

my Mother traces the yangtze river,
searching only the current, with a single finger,
softly, like the Bruises she traces,
in the places she Lies about.

home lies under the pounding river,
the provinces printed grey, perhaps silver,
smooth paper Stippled with cities, or lies,
or lines, like veins drawn towards one center.
  
one mother melts on the tongue of the white river,
the topography Terrifies, so drifting back, she lingers,
with only the sky in sight, striking contrasts soften into one.
in water, due land loses itself.

showering with eyes shut, she shivers,
feeling the contour of her blackened Bruises.
there is no hurt!
for Marks, she insists, are hardly Truths.