The Blind Cartographers

We were both poets.
There was never any money to pay the bills.

We lay in the dark,
wrapped in blankets,
making maps for the blind.
The blind cartographers.
The blind leading the blind.

We told stories,
traced the topographies of who we were,
mapped the treeline that cut across your face like a scar,
the rocky seashore of my spine,
the mountain ranges of your skull,
the endless prairies of my wrists.
We whispered places into being
there in our tiny apartment
spoke ourselves into existence,
revealed paths to our hearts,
fought through thickets,
traversed deserts,
until we found the core of our selves,
until we each knew the other's soul
the way we knew the landscape of our childhood,
until we could navigate by instinct,
until it no longer mattered that we were blind.