You blew out the last candle at 10 pm. As if this room isn’t a shrine, as if your peeling photograph, coffee stain like a birthmark isn’t propped against the one book you didn’t finish and left in place of you. Did your three of swords bookmark prick you? Did you ache to bear sorrow for me? You should have taken it with you then. I never asked you to carry me, I break enough things. Just a place to crawl into, like the space between breaths. The luxury of quiet outside contusion. The tang of pine in the sound after thunder.
Did you have enough of pain? Even the book you deserted keeps your secrets. Would you be here if you forced yourself to flip the page? Trawl burnt incense eyes over one more border, not so far to go. Or did you cheat and read the ending first? Did you have enough of me?
Did you know I’d run my fingers through the text like a contour map? Catch words like minnows, marooned in cupped hands like the remembered sounds of a shower’s hiss or clink of mugs. As though you’re still here, spilling over as you laugh at me, careless again.
I still love happy endings, I still hate final stretches. Do you remember when you knew that? Or the title of this book? The last word you read when you put it down? Do you remember things you leave unfinished?