I am noticing endings. Like when the day gives into night and when the night gives into day. Like when the food disappears from my plate and when the taste disappears from my mouth. Like when my eyes are too tired to keep open.  And that it was only yesterday, now gone, and I had been on the phone for hours with my best friend. Like when I finished that book and then this book, and I am beginning now another book. Like spring is here and it feels only it is ending. It has become less important what I imagine the others are saying and what I imagine they are thinking. The time above me is ticking and soon I will be in bed and maybe tomorrow will be here or not. It has ended: somethings that I felt, I no longer remember, and somethings that I felt, I remember but I no longer feel. I laughed a few hours ago, I am sure, but I must think to remember exactly when I did and what it was about. Mostly I feel this feeling, a nonchalant sadness that pricks into that imaginary heart but not with regret. A sort of knowing that is nevertheless unfamiliar.

This post will end and it will go through a few revisions after I hit publish. The mistakes you saw or are yet to encounter will probably be edited in a day or two weeks when there will be some distance between these words which are now more in my head than on this page, and I can, therefore, not see what is written but only what I am thinking. If I make enough money I will go back to school is what I am thinking, what I have been thinking, and I will complete my masters. The thought of this excites me. That I have something to accomplish; an end that I must work to bring. How many times have I processed the same thoughts about this or that. I cannot now recall but I think there have been moments like this and they too have ended just like this one is ending. But I like to think of it because I do not want to meet it in surprise. So I think of the ending and I do not fear it. It has always been happening and we are friends who quarrel sometimes because it does come when I am not ready, and it does come long after I am ready, and it always only comes when it wishes.

Memory is becoming more and more ridiculous as I become more and more aware of the moments ending. But are they really ending? It seems so. I did finish that book after all. I did put all that food into me after all, and they came out another time and I repeated the same process. I ran into an old friend last time and it was awkward; strange because some time ago we seemed to be joined at the hip. I did wish Mother good morning yesterday just like this morning. I might tomorrow morning, too.

Oh! Something neat happened earlier this evening which has ended but not entirely so, it is a beginning in endings. Mother went through her things, and for some of her old clothes I am now the new owner. They have ended with her and now begun with me. There is this particular one that she wore about three decades ago. I only know because a photograph has her frozen in it as she poses in her little okro garden. That garden ended. I remember it a little. Her okro leaves were favorited by the neighbor’s goats. I remember the soil often smelling of goat feces. Manure. And I remember saying, Shoo! Shoo!! As I chased away goats on shorter legs than I have now. The way she looked in that picture has ended, too. She was much younger then. Skinnier. Even the clothes, as it was in that photo, has ended; it is mostly the fault of the blues in it. They have ignored their boundaries and bled into the whites after Mother washed them––by hand too, she told me. But the gold threads are intact. Untouched by the blues.

My tea is gone and I think I will end here, too.

–
Jane