Untitled

The final period of any piece of writing is the hardest to type. What's held in this punctuation? It seems more determined when hand-written, more deserving. Typing that last line feels like a self adhesive stamp placed on an envelope. Sometimes, when i'm feeling particularly absent, i'm almost inclined to lick it... just for good measure. The act of finishing makes me nervous. When done shittily, i'm embarrassed to complete it. When done well, i'm overly critical. So there's a middle ground that i often tread on, balancing on the ridges of a barbed wire fence, occasionally slipping just to get my shirt sleeve entangled in the top and leave me dangling an inch above the ground. I yank myself up, and start the wire-walk all over again. It ruins my shoes, you know, toeing this razor thin line of worth.

I'd rather always start a sentence, an opening line so decorative and compelling it makes an illiterate fall in love. This is how i spend a good portion of my day, writing the opening line to a particularly novel novel. I smile, and imagine how the story would follow. Maybe a paragraph drafts itself, if the line is so willing, rolling into general narratives cut together with "and then"s "and then"s "and then"s. They spread too thin, my opening lines, like watching rock move to molten lava move to pebbles move to sand. I thrust my desperate hand into the work, but too tight of a squeeze and it all slips out, spilling through my fingers, fragments trapped inside the pockets of my jeans, remnants caught within the unnavigable tangles of my hair. At first its a comfort when pieces fall out - a reminder of what i've done. But sooner or later, after the 6th shower and the 2nd load of laundry, you start to resent it's incomplete presence. They call this fear of commitment, i hear, but i'd rather see it as the immortality of action. For a period is too heartless, egotistical, unforgiving. Yes, i'd much rather start something and watch it dissolve than place an unnecessary punctuation where punctuation is not due