Cartography of an Illness
To bear the day, I touch a print of a map:
this old Venetian portolan chart,
ink on vellum, drawn to guide captains to port.
I once thought I could captain life itself,
and sketched my own map—partial, raw—with ports marked
school, study, and the ventures of love.
But shipwreck came, by way of infection.
Now, on a phantom island, I live apart,
in a bed, with an illness doctors claimed
for years was make-believe. If you saw me
from above—as might a bird or a god—
you would spot my waiting hand. You would hear me
ask “Where am I?” to the compass rose, while
the sea rolls navy blue, and the decades sail on.
The poem appears in the summer 2025 issue of
HEAL: Humanism Evolving through Arts and Literature, a journal published by the Florida State University College of Medicine. I’ll link to the PDF. The poem is on page 5.
https://public.med.fsu.edu/images/newsletters/Heal/25_summer/images/2025SummerHEAL-V3.pdf
