The Cartographer of Tomorrow

Maybe the future was never meant to be mapped. Maybe all we can really leave behind are the choices we almost made, and the footprints we haven’t reached yet.
~hira♡

Hey Hira!!♡
Why are ur metaphors always making me question existence? The idea of Tomorrow employing a mapmaker to chart itself is already such a great one, but then you have every place in the world changing before she's even got round to drawing it. That's the essence of the impossibility of predicting the future when everything is in a state of flux.

“She drew a river and it dried into a rumour.
She drew a mountain and it forgot to be a mountain.”

okay so i read this one slowly, then went back to the top and read it again, which i almost never do 🥹 "Tomorrow hired a mapmaker to chart itself" is such a fun, strange opening, and i honestly smiled at the screen. it felt like the kind of line i'd want to steal for myself.
the river that "dried into a rumor" and the mountain that "forgot to be tall" are my favorites. they're funny and sad at the same time, and i kept thinking about how my own plans for next year never stay put either 😅 then she stops drawing places and starts drawing intentions, and that's the moment the poem really opened up for me 💛 "a blank patch where someone was still deciding" is so human, it felt like she'd drawn me on that map. and the ending, footprints already walking ahead "like someone who had come this way in a dream and left a light on," gave me actual chills 🕯️ it's gentle and a little eerie in the best way.
now the honest bit, because i really liked it and i want it to hit even harder 😅 the middle stanza is a little list-like, with the arrow, the spiral and the blank patch all doing a similar job, so it loses some of the surprise the first stanza had. i'd keep the blank patch (it's the strongest) and make the other two more specific, maybe tell us whose hand hovered over the door. "mostly weather and hesitation" is a lovely phrase, but "weather" is doing a lot without us knowing what kind, and i wanted one concrete image there. also, the mapmaker is "she" in the first stanza, but then the poem drifts to "travelers" and "someone," so i lost track of her by the end. one small nod back to her would tie it together ✨
overall it's clever, tender and really memorable, and a bit of tightening in the middle would make it even stronger 🌿

the best maps aren't of places, they're of the moments you almost turned back, and you already know how to draw those. 🧭

This is really beautiful, yet so fascinatingly metaphorical. And I just love it.
It is true that, perhaps the future was never really meant to be mapped out. Sometimes, you will just have to go with the flow of life - you will not know what tomorrow will have in store for you. It could be anything, really.
Therefore, I admire your way of telling - a river became a rumor because it hasn’t yet flown or ebbed out, with the lively, and swirling, dance of one. Then she drew a mountain, but it forgot to be tall because it has not lived just yet to grow the length, and hasn’t understood what it means to be a mountain in the land of tomorrow. This is because none of it has happened, but will in the future.
Overall, really beautiful poem, and I hope I saw through the metaphors correctly and somewhere touched the underlying message
I envy poets who can come up with such otherworldly ideas and write their hearts out, something I think was accomplished in this short yet powerful poem!

This was such an interesting way to describe the future. I really liked the idea of Tomorrow hiring a mapmaker, because it makes something impossible to predict feel almost like a real place. The part about drawing intentions instead of places was my favorite, especially the blank patch for someone who was still deciding. The ending was beautiful too, with the footprints already walking ahead. It left me thinking about how uncertain the future really is.

Hello hira! A review for a review

It was the title of your poem that drew me in initially, and it already has such a unique question about it. The poem itself certainly lived up to the title and I just absolutely adore the premise - it is simultaneously beautiful, fantastical, and philosophical, all wrapped up into three well-structured and obviously thoughtful stanzas.

I love that Tomorrow is personified here, and a little part of me wished we had more insight into this personification of Tomorrow, although that could be selfish of me as a reader since the focus really is on the hired cartographer. I think there is something masterful about the images you design in the first stanza, particularly with the vanishing ink. At the same time, I feel like the theme of the poem, while focused on the future, also in many ways invokes the present and the past, which just makes it all the more contemplative in my opinion.

A few notes:

So she stopped drawing places and drew intentions instead:

a blank patch where someone was still deciding.

already walking ahead of them, a little faint,
like someone who had come this way in a dream and left a light on.