If We Never Look Back

Submitted unedited. There was something else intended for the 13th anniversary of this diary’s first entry. It should have been, anyway; I was back east spending time with old friends, older even than this place. I missed my diary’s anniversary for the first time, which seemed like just one more reason why it may as well have been the last. Small hours and snapped bridge cables. I went over the parting words again and again in my head. I downloaded the awkward punctuation and pointless paragraph breaks and memories I should have let go years back. I detached from the broken image links. I laughed at the poetry and winced at the rest. Nerve endings and broken ice. I packed my bags. I turned out the lights. I prayed a silent elegy in a new church and tossed one more set of writerly rosary beads to the wind on the way home from mass. Palates and fresh tongues. Just me and a Maker, moving on.

But the door lets light through and you know this because you can see it when the hour is late and no one’s around. The site goes down and comes back again; everything burns in spite of itself. Kerosene at dawn. You can pour water on hot coals and watch the embers burn long after the flame is gone.

You can find me if you want to look, but that’s not what this was ever about. This is something else, something sacred. Keep it that way. And don’t ask if this is the end when there’s no such thing.