The End of The Beginning

listened to this as kids on her kitchen floor: broke up a few feet away the day she

turned twenty. the hardest part is looking back and imagining telling them it's

gonna end. that you won’t always be sprawled in their old shirt in a bed not made

with a hand in your heart and hope on your tongue. you don’t want them to know

the powerlessness, the fear, the sheer dread of it all. big emotions and quiet rooms,

still lines betwixt and between. it’s hell learning that love does what it needs to and

sometimes that need is ending. love is why, and for the sake of why, it has to (try to)

stop. they'll always be in your heart, but you can't be there for them, even though

you don't love them for you. maybe it doesn't matter in the long run, but that

doesn't matter. you want life and love for them as they are and as they will be.

that's why we're loving at all. the love may die, but love itself doesn't. love never

stops: it goes all the way down. no matter what happens, it happened. it was there.

it might haunt you - love does that. might hear its echoes everywhere, like a

grievous tinnitus. it might just hurt like hell, seeding regrets you can't yet imagine.

the end does come, and it is coming: is it worth it to give it something to tear out.

in any event, it is ten years since. my hair is patchy. I am less lonely and

considerably more alone. there is the downstairs and nothing more. no trees to

eavesdrop on and no night to live in. twenty-four-year-olds can’t walk around

outside at 3am. my guitar is awkward and heavy. villa rica is complete and youth

has come and gone - I dropped that quarter into the machine awhile ago. old

boyhood dreams simmer in my chest and ebb to memory. it’s all over. all I can do

now is get up and walk.

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