“Shall we end it?” I ask myself - softly,
as though the words might shatter if spoken too clearly,
as though the question has been waiting in the room for years,
sitting politely in the corner beside the dimming light,
watching me rehearse smaller thoughts instead...
It feels almost romantic, I think - this quiet proposal,
this delicate folding of existence into something finite,
like pressing a flower between pages no one will reopen...
I do not answer at once -
it studies me with a distant, yet peculiar patience,
like a portrait that has grown tired of being observed,
head tilted at that unsettling angle
where sympathy and indifference blur into a singular expression...
“Endings are beautiful,” it finally bursts out, almost fondly,
“they have a way of resolving things - of smoothing
all the jagged edges into something almost deliberate, something smooth,
like the final line of a poem you never quite understood...”
“But they are final,” I reply,
and the word lingers - heavy, unyielding,
like a steel door locked shut, never to reopen,
like a silence that refuses to be interrupted...
I think of all the unfinished fragments scattered through me -
sentences abandoned halfway through their meaning,
moments that never decided what they were becoming,
a life composed mostly of beginnings that forgot their endings...
“Finality is a kindness,” myself insists - gently now,
as though trying not to startle something already breaking…
“No more mornings arriving without permission,
no more conversations that circle themselves into exhaustion,
no more false facades pretending 'Everything is okay',
no more pretending the weight of it all is temporary...
You could rest, you know... properly rest...
not this drifting, restless imitation you’ve perfected…”
Outside, the world continues with absurd devotion -
a pigeon arguing with its invisible adversary,
the sky repeating its dull performance of grey,
as though it has forgotten other colours ever existed...
It opens up and coats me in its tears,
and when it does me and the sky are one and the same,
Somewhere, a bus arrives precisely on time,
for no one at all, its doors opening to an empty pavement,
as if fulfilling an obligation neither it nor the world remembers...
It all carries on - meticulously, pointlessly, monotonously -
and I cannot decide whether this is comforting or cruel...
“And what of the unfinished?” I ask,
my voice quieter now - almost reluctant...
“The half-read books stacked like quiet accusations,
the words that hovered at the edge of being spoken,
the versions of me that never quite arrived...
Do they simply vanish, or do they linger somewhere,
waiting for a conclusion that will never come...
I heard some people blossom later in life, am I one of those people?”
I shrug - slow, indifferent, devastating...
“Loose ends are honest,” it says.
“They reveal the truth - that nothing was ever whole,
that coherence was only ever a rumour you believed in...
Why preserve the illusion any longer...”
We fall into a silence that feels too large, too long -
stretching out like an unfinished corridor,
where every step echoes a question without an answer...
A clock somewhere begins to lose its rhythm,
ticking unevenly - not broken, just uncertain...
as though even time has grown weary of insisting
that things must continue in a straight line...
or should it continue circling round and around -
repeating this never ending nightmare, over and over again...
“I am so tired,” I admit -
and the words feel far older, far greater than I,
as though they have been waiting years
for the courage to exist out loud...
“I know,” I reply - softer now, almost human,
almost in a way that feels dangerous, yet kind...
Then a pause - long, fragile, trembling…
“And yet...” I begin - though I do not know why...
“And yet,” it echoes, but the certainty has thinned,
its voice no longer anchored, drifting slightly
as though it, too, is unsure which side it belongs to…
“There is always another line... however meaningless…
another sentence that refuses to conclude itself...
another moment that arrives without justification…
another painful memory, piercing the heart thoroughly,
You could continue... even without believing in it...”
We sit there - divided and identical -
on opposite sides of the same unbearable thought,
arguing without raising our voices,
as though volume might make it real...
One of us reaches, slowly, almost lovingly,
towards the idea of a final full stop -
a perfect, silent conclusion...
The other, stubborn and trembling,
scatters ellipses into the dark...
over and over...
as if delay itself might become a kind of meaning...