Cartographer's Lament

By the same stars we navigated,
We intertwined our paths
And layered our maps
Like the blankets we shared.

I marked the miles
As he measured the hills,
New streets we drew with borrowed lines
We didn't know could turn
Overdue.

I knew right from his left,
My landmarks were his,
Plotting the fate
Our constellations had designed.

The light in the horizon
Covered cracks on the road,
Perhaps I ignored the warning
That at times even stars 
Don't stay their course.

He kept silent miles before
He took the sudden turn,
The edges could not bear
The pull of divergent routes:
It tore our atlas in two.

Left with fragments
Of a once familiar map,
I go down wrong paths often,
Blank spots aplenty and
Lampposts too few.

The routes I take
Are now disconcerting,
Part familiar, part foreign,
Half still the same, half all new.

My landscape has been relaid,
The scale is all askew,
The directions erased,
Buildings wrecked and
The once bright horizon 

Now wavering lines of gray.

I pass the old clocktower;

The minute hand lags,
The library is half crumbling, 
And the town hall melting
Into the square,
Now not quite a square.

I am a stranger in my own town,
Half-hidden faces pass in view,
I fear I may see him at the turn
And fear that I never will.