The Perfect Ending
I think I started with the ending.
In the story of my life
I think I started with the ending
Tied up loose ends
before there were any
And resolved loopholes
That I hadn’t yet created
And while that may work
For all academic intents and purposes
I wonder if it works for life
How would I even know if it did?
Except in the three millisecond
Bookending my last breath
I find myself watching
The crescendo of my character
Constructing my final self -
The self I’ll have to be to embody my chosen ending
And I wonder what the million steps
Of my character arc are
That will get me from start to finish
It seems impossible
I’m trying to get there in three steps
Beginning, middle, end
But I need to remember
That life won’t follow the same
rules of exposition
They taught us in class
Seems like I wrote my ending first
With blatant disregard for the way I need to get there
Who I need to be, what I need to do
Does the story make sense?
Does it look good?
For what point is a life well lived
If it doesn’t look like that
Is art, art? If it was never glanced upon
Is my story worth telling
If there’s not enough people watching
And if there not enough people watching
Is the story good at all?
Again,
I wrote my ending first
And balked
From everything that didn’t fit the narrative
Unable to stray
From a chaotic first draft
That I wrote ambitiously
Because masterpieces are only so
In retrospect
When we have gazed and gazed
And finally found reason
To rationalize their greatness
And it’s not in me to write a great story
But I can make it so in posterity
I can’t fix the start and the end points
And then force the universe
To walk the line in compliance
I cannot
Start with the end
