Symphony White Page

Morning.
A blank page lies on the desk,
completely untouched.
It asks for nothing. It simply waits.
And in this waiting, there is more living forest
than in an entire cabinet of files.

Outside the window, Baku.
A tree holds up the sky with its slender branches.
It has nothing to prove.
It simply is.

Today I do not turn on the printer.
I do not hear its short cough,
nor watch as sheet after sheet
surrenders its whiteness
to become someone else's necessity.

October stands outside the window,
like a guest who has taken off his coat
but still hesitates to sit down.

I open the window.
The khazri wind enters the room.
Bringing the scent of damp earth, the Caspian,
and the distant rustle of leaves.
It feels as though the forest is turning its own pages.
Slowly. Without a single printed line.

A letter appears on the screen.
I read it and do not click "Print".
A tiny movement of the finger. Almost nothing.
Yet somewhere a tree still stands,
where a bird will sleep tonight.
Somewhere a branch will not fall.
A nest will not be left empty.

Paper has preserved so much:
a letter from those who are gone,
a child's drawing,
a book page read by candlelight.
Now we can preserve it.
Not through bans. Not through grand promises.
Simply by a movement paused above the key.
By a single document left in digital form.

The twenty-second of October.
The page remains blank.
There is not a single word upon it,
yet I hear the sap moving, the bark breathing,
and the roots holding the earth in the dark.

A blank page is not emptiness.
It is a room where no one has yet grown tired.
A place for the new — green and alive.
The maple drops its little letters:
yellow commas in autumn's long sentence.
And no one prints them anew.

---

Alın Ak / KaJe MeG
October 22 — World Paper Free Day
Digital footprint preserved.
🍃📜🫖✨🕊