I Am An Atlas

I said I needed space
so everyone left
I said I needed to find myself
so they gave me a map

Even still I got lost among the blue and red lines
intersections and inter-states of my paper
the creases in my counties were too sharp
and so I bled on the green and brown blotches of my national forest

I fell into my rivers and was carried downstream
and wound up floating in my seas, over black text Atlantic

Unable to recover what I'd lost,
I was given a bigger map and washed ashore in Africa
somewhere, a speck, in the jungles of Cambodia

Stumbled over smooth lines and into my Mauritania
and landed face-first on my dry earth
Rolling onto my back of Sanskrit letters

I said I needed space
so everyone left
I said I needed to find myself
so they gave me a map