The Unmapping

by Denise S. Robbins

The city is a map before him, a detailed painting on a thin piece of paper, and this paper is now growing larger, but he is not falling; the world is coming to him. The world is flat and it is coming. This city, or this paper that looks like a city, rising up to greet him, as if he were falling, but he’s not; he’s in the air perfectly still, stapled to the sky, as the buildings rush up at him. But he’s not scared; it’s just a photograph, one piece of glossy paper rising up to the clouds. A rough wind comes and bends the photograph; he can see its edges, its flatness, how it moves and swirls. The wind grows harder now, in all directions, and the photograph bends and rips in two. It rips again and again until the photograph is a million different photos, each building in the city on its own piece of paper that shudders and swirls with the others like fake snow in a snow globe. The pieces begin to fall, one by one. When they land, it is quiet. He watches where they go.