ENDINGS — a fiction
And this is how all things end. Two lovers sit by the sea or the city river or the park by the council estate or the village green or the Headman’s yam field or the edge of the creek. There is space between them. They fill it with speech or text or EarPods or scratches in the dirt with their trainers or sandals or brogues or oil skins or naked feet. They tap fingers upon the wooden bench or concrete wall or lemon branch or fence post or car bonnet.
They both know it is coming. They have known for days, weeks, sometimes years. It started as a discomfort in their chest or their fingertips or the marrow of their bones or the edges of their conscious thought or the soft points of their soul. It might have spread, or just niggled away in its original position like a hardwood splinter or a shard of glass from where their hand once brushed against a mirror cracked from side to side.
Regardless, it is always the same.
The words are said, the message is sent, the look is given. There may be words or there may be none. There may be tears or there may be none. There may be a public outcry or the whole affair may plummet into obscurity the moment it ends. But those few seconds, that single moment of delivery is always the same. The coldness is always there, the hollow heart somehow stumbling on and the sounds caught in the throat. And, always, always, the unstoppable inevitability of it all.
For, eventually, everything falls and all that is left is settling air — the vibrations of love quieting into eternity.