In this moment

When I tell you that I have to leave,

university, visas, family,

you take a map, crease and fold the world

until oceans fall away and Vancouver and Warsaw sit

side by side.

In your hands, the miles shrink and disappear

and we're together, the distance

somehow less daunting. Poland no longer a far away world

in which you don't exist.

And I am comforted by the crumpled, worn map

tucked safely between your hands.