Endings

I am standing where the ground changes

without asking permission.

 

Behind me, names loosen their grip.

What we called “us” settles into memory,

not gone,

just no longer able to answer back.

 

There is a particular quiet

when a collective ending arrives—

the sound of many footsteps stopping at once,

the air unsure what shape to take next.

Grief here is plural.

It belongs to no single body.

 

And still—

there is beauty in this stopping.

In the honesty of things

no longer pretending to continue.

In the relief of release.

 

I meet my own endings at the same threshold.

They are smaller,

but they speak more directly.

They ask me to look.

They ask me not to rush past

what is finished,

but instead to linger with loving gaze.

 

This place between is not neutral ground.

It is dark, and it is working.

 

The ancients knew this.

They watched the trees long enough

to understand that nothing begins

without first entering the soil.

Roots must move through rot.

Seeds split open or remain dormant forever.

 

What we call an ending

is often a burial without a eulogy,

but burial is not erasure.

It is a careful placing.

It is the earth receiving

what has completed its work.

 

What we call a beginning

is the same earth,

turned slightly,

warmed by time.

 

In the in-betweenness of stories,

I feel both the grave and the womb

pressing against my ribs.

One holds what no longer needs becoming.

The other shapes a body

that does not yet know its name.

 

The forest does not mourn endlessly.

Fallen leaves burn gold before they fall.

Dead wood feeds what will come next.

The tree keeps its rings as record,

not as regret.

 

There is beauty in endings

because they tell the truth.

Because they clear the field.

Because they make space

that nothing else could make.

 

I am learning to stand like that—

to let endings be complete,

to let beginnings be unforced,

to trust the dark as a place of labour,

not loss.

 

If there is wisdom here,

it is old and quiet:

stay present at the threshold.

Do not confuse stillness with emptiness.

What is forming cannot be rushed,

but what has ended

deserves its beauty too.