The Cartography of Unchosen Things
Poetry and Prose by Britt Wolfe
I was not a request—
just a ripple in the still water
that someone mistook for fate.
The house was built before I arrived,
its rooms already heavy with echoes.
I learned early how to fold myself
into wallpaper patterns,
how to speak softly enough
to avoid disturbing the dust.
There were moments, though—
brief and blistering—
sunlight catching the bleach
on the kitchen counter like glitter.
A stuffed bear named for ice and silence,
his fur thinning where I held on too hard.
A map torn from a magazine
I was never meant to touch.
A VHS humming with dinosaurs and maybe-love.
I keep those things close,
the proof that not everything was absence.
But I grew old before I grew up,
measuring years in exits
and almost-gones.
I dreamed of continents
where no one would know my name,
where I could be a creature of cold
and clean beginnings.
Now the map is gone,
and I know there’s nowhere left to go.
Even the poles are spoken for.
Even the ghosts have neighbours.
So I stay.
I trudge through the quicksand of what was,
through every word flung like acid rain.
I patch the holes with memory,
with the smallest kindnesses I can still believe in.
And when I sleep,
I curl around the bear—
as if I could still protect
the part of me that didn’t ask
to be born
but stayed anyway.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe
