All Things End

All things end—
not with the violence we brace for,
but with an exhale so quiet
it takes days to realise
you have already been left.

The world does not shatter when it ends.
It slips.
It sinks.
It recedes into the shape of what used to be,
folding itself delicately
into the seams of your memory
and vanishing there.

We imagine endings as cataclysm—
as fire, as flood, as final word.
But most arrive
like a door you didn’t know you were closing,
soft at the edges,
barely perceptible—
until you turn around
and find nothing waiting behind you.

You will never be warned.
You will never be ready.
The last time will not announce itself.
It will come disguised
as ordinary—
a day like any other,
a conversation you’ve had before,
the hands you’ve held
a thousand times without reverence.

And still—
it will be the last.

Time is not kind.
It is not cruel.
It simply is.
A force that does not pause
to watch you bleed.
A tide that pulls,
indifferent to what it displaces.

History consumes us
with quiet hunger.
It does not mark where we end—
only where we once were.
And even that,
only briefly.

You may return to the place.
Stand exactly where it happened.
Breathe the same air.
But it will not rise to meet you.
It will not remember your name.

There are endings so complete
they do not leave you broken—
they leave you changed.
As if the soul itself
has been altered in its architecture.
You carry on, yes—
but not as the person
you once were.
Not even close.

No redemption.
No meaning.
No higher lesson folded into the ruin.
Only this:
what was,
is no longer.
And that truth
must be survived.

So you go on—
not healed,
but altered.
Not whole,
but aware.
Of silence.
Of fragility.
Of how everything you love
will end,
and end,
and end again.

And still,
you wake.
You rise.
You make coffee.
You try.
Which, in its own unspeakable way,
is a kind of prayer.