Directions to a Room for the Night

You fold the paper map
Carefully, so you keep
The marker-highlighted
Part face-up on the top,
And as you pleat creases
You think about paper

And maps, and how people
Used to sketch local maps
Sometimes for visitors,
How you used to linger
In bookstores’ map sections,
Poring over pages,

Staple-folded, larger
In surface area
Than your torso, squinting
At thin lines and numbers,
Trying to imagine
What the country was like

Under those steep mountains,
Along those jagged coasts,
On dirt roads like pale scars
Cutting through large green blocks
Labeled as wilderness.
Wilderness! Area!

You’ve been to so many
Of those dreamed places now,
Lived years in some of them.
Some took your breath away.
Some disappointed you.
Many of them did both.

None meant what attention
Focused on paper made
Them mean inside you once.
Pick up your folded map
The front desk handed you.
What can you make this mean?