Write Your Own Ending

Shawn Keller
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read
Ars moriendi

Go ahead, send your imps and demons to tempt me at the end.
Promise me salvation, money, fame, fawning women,
but I will not be tempted. I have read the “Ars moriendi”.

I know the tricks.
Plus, they will never even make it to my bedside, for I am
the author of my own life.

“Life’s like a movie.” Kermit the Frog observed, “Write your own ending.”

I will do precisely that.


No one had seen Lisa in a week, Robert Stack intoned
in his stentorian baritone on tonight’s episode
of “Unsolved Mysteries”. Lisa never missed work.
William entered her trailer that humid Sunday August
afternoon in 1991, and in the closeness of that tin box
he could already smell her death. Lisa was gone, motionless in
her bed. Days? Hours?
How long had it been?

How long will it be for me?
Will bedsitters hold vigil in the final hours, waiting for my eyes to close,
like Edward Stanton waited for Lincoln, to proclaim “Now he belongs to the ages”,
when my light goes out?
Or, silenter still, will my body wait in repose for
mourners who never come? Will hours move to days, days into weeks,
weeks into months, my corpse only discovered once my neighbors call the cops on the stink?

“Life’s like a movie. Write your own ending.”

I will wait for no mourners. I will write my own denouement.
I’m moving to Southern California to kill myself.
1790 Argyle Avenue, in the shadow of Capital Records,
that’s the scene.
Perhaps a shotgun to the face, Papa Hemingway style?
Or a rope, like Pete Ham?
Or bathe in bourbon and see if I float, like Dylan Thomas
and snuff it out in a dying light rage?
The truth is in the details. The narrative gathers
power from the brand of cigarettes on the bedside.
Camels.
Smoked at train stops on the California Zephyr,
Chicago to San Francisco, and then by foot,
down the coast, taking my time.
I’m saying goodbye, after all.
I should do it properly and craft a proper ending.
At Santa Monica, I will dip my feet in the Pacific,
and then spirit away.
The LAPD walking into that pastel room on Argyle Avenue
like an epilogue.

“Life’s like a movie. Write your own ending.”

Is it so wrong to want to write the narrative of your own life?
I understand why they did it:
Papa Hemingway, Pete Ham, Chris Cornell, Robin Williams.

Take your pick.

The only story you control is the story of yourself.
Why not go out in drama?
A choice between devilish temptation or lying bed-bound,
your final shit tagging the end?
That’s no fucking choice at all.
The ending they wrote is better.


The flashing of the ambulance red/blue
goes on through the twilight and the shadow
of Capital Records elongates into a dagger.
Radio transmissions, folded with static,
drift from microphones as the over-used gurney
bounces down the stairs, and through the waiting doors of the ambulance,
a low ‘cello arrives with hints of oboe as she pulls away, a rush of diesel vapor for a moment,
and then gone,
turning left on Vine, disappearing into dusk.
I have this scene.
An epilogue, for now.

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