share


Endings

Everything I’m writing has been short recently.

I don’t like to write endings. I’m bad at them.

 

Endings must have a stake in what happened,

and I’ve never been interested in what happened.

 

Where have we been? Endings ask.

Where must we go from here? They answer.

 

Some people, lucky ones, can only write endings—

as if forever in state of taking stock and gazing out,

 

as if to fall, to fear, these things could go on

indefinitely, as if shadow were just another word for shade.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is a writer from New York. His work also appears in Ambit, the Boston Review, poets.org, and elsewhere.



READ NEXT

feature

September 2014

The Mediatisation of Contemporary Writing

Nick Thurston

feature

September 2014

Trying to figure out what marks contemporary literature as contemporary is a deceptively complicated job because the concept of...

Interview

Issue No. 17

Interview with George Saunders

Aidan Ryan

Interview

Issue No. 17

The American short story writer George Saunders has the kind of reputation that makes one hesitate before typing his...

fiction

January 2017

Peace

Patrick Cottrell

fiction

January 2017

Every morning as I walk to school through the dark blue decrepit world, I feel like I’m coming down...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required