No map prepared me for this terrain.

The world was drawn for ears:
arrows pointing toward alarms, voices, warnings;
as if sound were the only border worth naming.

I learned another geography.

I learned where light pools
when a room shifts mood.
I learned the slope of intention
in a shoulder turning away.
I learned the vibration beneath floors:
the low weather of motion
passing through bone.

My body became instrument.
My eyes, a kind of sonar.
Every gesture a coordinate.

I learned where to stand
so meaning would reach me.
I learned how to move
so I would not disappear.

Hearing people call this silence.
But silence is inaccurate.

This is density.
This is data.
This is a landscape written
in pulse, pressure, pause.

I do not navigate by sound.
I navigate by truth,
by what insists on being felt.

This is my atlas.
Not absence, not deficit,
but a precise cartography
of attention.

---

David Anson Lee (he/him) is a poet, philosopher, and physician with publications in Right Hand Pointing, Ink Sweat & Tears, Braided Way, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, and other journals. His work explores disability, medicine, perception, and resilience through lyric and narrative forms.