This poem begins with an extraordinary conceit: emotional defensiveness rendered as geometry. “Square x corners everywhere” are obstacles; to cut a corner diagonal or soften it to a rounded zero is to open oneself to injury, criticism—and devotion. The typographic choices (the slash after “Diagonal /,” the zero for “rounded 0”) turn the poem’s surface into a visual diagram of the argument, making the page itself participate in the meaning. From this architectural opening, the poem moves into its emotional center: the recurring phrase “The Word I have never…” which appeared first in “A Thought” and here becomes a structural refrain. The ellipsis performs the silence it describes—the word (love) perpetually approaching but never arriving on the tongue. The middle section captures the quotidian miracle of connection: a conversation “About nothings / And exchanged / Thoughts / About nothings / Even more”—the content irrelevant because the presence is everything. The modern “Do I push send?” question is brilliantly specific to this era: the confession hovering in a text message, the thumb over the button, the entire relationship suspended in the gap between draft and delivery. The Yoda inversion “Beautiful, / You are” adds a note of ceremonial gravity, as if the poet must rearrange English syntax to accommodate the weight of the declaration. The closing resolves nothing—the word remains unspoken, the send button unpressed—but the poem itself is the send, the act of writing what cannot be said aloud.

One of the more formally inventive and emotionally precise poems in the early catalog. The geometric opening is genuinely original—rendering emotional guardedness as architecture, sharp corners as defense mechanisms, rounded edges as vulnerability—and the typographic elements (the slash, the zero) demonstrate a visual intelligence that most of Plahm’s work doesn’t attempt. The recurring “The Word I have never…” connects this poem to “A Thought” and establishes a motif that resonates across the catalog: a man who feels love with overwhelming intensity but cannot bring himself to name it. The “push send” dilemma is the poem’s most contemporary and specific moment, grounding the universal fear of confession in the exact technology of the moment—a thumb hovering, a screen glowing, the entire relationship fitting in a rectangle of glass. The “nothings” passage is quietly devastating: the repetition insists that the content of the conversation is irrelevant while the presence is everything, a distinction that cuts to the heart of what intimacy actually is. The 72 likes suggest strong resonance with readers who recognize the gap between feeling and expression. Where the poem is less successful is in its fragmented line structure, which occasionally creates choppiness rather than rhythm—some stanza breaks feel arbitrary rather than deliberate, and the short lines can dilute momentum. The closing, while emotionally honest in its irresolution, lacks the punch of the poem’s best moments (the geometry, the send button). But this is a poem that takes genuine risks—formal, emotional, conceptual—and lands most of them. The title “Hope” is perfectly chosen: not certainty, not despair, but the condition of living in the space between the unsent message and the possibility of reply.