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where it began
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it all starts with an end.
that was what you told me when we first met. we laughed at all of the world ending around us, as if it'd never happen to us. the movie playing at the sunday matinee. the universe we shared with our past loves. we were supposed to be immune to those endings. but we'd started with an end; we'd finish with an end.
there was a time though, when beginnings were all we knew. our beginning together. you asked me what my favorite film of all time was and i told you how ridiculous that question is, because there is no such thing as greatness. there is only now, and when i'm gone, someone else will take my place, and so will their version of greatness.
in my defense, i'd only just met you, so i hadn't realized that something could be great. a love shared between people could be the greatest love of all until it wasn't anymore. would it still be great then? or would someone else's version of greatness replace the love we shared? would they claim that movie theater as their own beginnings? would we become nothing but an ending once again? this time a version all of our own. one that a future us would laugh at. or maybe cry. i cry a lot now, i wonder if you do too.
when i wake up alone at night, clawing at my bedsheets and dripping sweat and tears — i can never tell the difference anymore because there's so much of them — i ask myself if you're waking up too. if your dream has just ended along with mine. that maybe you're wondering what it'd be like to be in my bed again, to hold my hand again, to be my greatest love of all time.
maybe you've already experienced your new beginning. maybe there's a girl you've met who laughs at your jokes. hopefully she can give you an answer to what her favorite film of all time is. i know how much you like watching movies.
you'd always ask me to pick one and i could never give an answer. i didn't want to admit that i just wanted you to pick your favorite so i could watch you the entire time. you were the real star of my show. you were the only thing i wanted to fall asleep to.
i ask myself if there's a version of us that exists in some universe where beginnings don't have endings. where a song goes on forever, and a love expands across the galaxy, and i am not me but a half of you and me. i like to think that maybe you could have been the one. that maybe time didn't exist, because if it didn't then there is nowhere to start and therefore nowhere to end.
i know we've already reached our end, and that there possibly exists a new beginning already for you. but i can't. i can't start new with leaving a goodbye.
if this finds you and digs up a chasm in the depths of your heart that you'd already filled with new beginnings, then i'm sorry. i'll send you some seeds to grow anew.
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