A Map of Alaska Pinned to My Bedroom Ceiling

by: Abigail Fife

I poke holes through my home and hang it with tiny stakes,

a faraway desire to gaze in content

to the rushing lines and tea-stained crinkles,

a mirrored vision reflecting back into my sleepless eyes

of harsh moonlight drowning sunlight for a season,

its rays like pencil streaks peaking over paper mache mountains

and ink seas,

Bering Sea blubber tears of Arctic numbness,

desolate emotions to voyage and discover

yet not glory pines and snow-capped civilizations,

but the lines of the horizon,

a great landscape encased,

not between glass bulbs with fluttering glitter snowflakes,

nor digitized moments lasered with a glossy wax,

but a diary entry a cartographer found and read

then transcribed with his instruments

to mold a detailed landscape of my heart’s inner workings,

with its shaded inclines and declining attitude altitudes,

hiding unearthed ice age treasures, adventure

plastered to my ceiling as I lay in bed stargazing

to the fan-blown fluttering Milkyway

dotting stars of hearth colonies,

their distances fingertips apart from my view on the ground

but the trek from one cup of steaming tea and bread

at the corner of the square galaxy

to the next

contains miles of bay-blown winds and pulsing ice steps,

yet the gaze of its fraying edges and black outlines

reminds me of my own years,

the ones I have left,

and that to bathe in the luminescent foam

of dream clouds

I will need a pair of snow boots, not a piece of paper.