Cartography

Cartography

Sarah Eshleman

I trace her marks like a map, 
Charting the continents of pigment
Afloat on the sea of her skin—
An archipelago flung above her elbow,
Triangular Sicily settled in the small of her back,
And between her shoulders Antarctica,
With a vein like a frozen delta running through it.

The earth is scarred
With canyons gashed by floods,
Mountains stacked by quakes,
Craters pocked by plunging stars. 

Her marks were formed at her creation,
cells fearfully torn loose, 
pigment wonderfully mismatched,
Not scars upon her landscape 
But the land itself as I discovered her—
My favorite part of the world.

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Sarah Eshleman
Writer & Editor

Sarah works as editor in chief for a nonprofit in the Cincinnati area and holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Converse College. She has been published in Ruminate, Counterclock, Borrowed Solace, and Mslexia.

Photography by Wesley Tingey