leaving somewhere. a bit like finishing a book.
not necessarily a good one, but one that's been occupying your thoughts, been a part of your daily routine.
a little death in which you know it’ll all fade away in a matter of days. you can tell yourself it’ll be inside of you forever, but before too long you’ve forgotten the main character's name. you know that now, despite things remaining almost the same, you won’t be thinking about the same things anymore, won’t get to hear about the people and lives that you used to.
sometimes there are new characters, new journeys to follow. but sometimes you don’t have a new book lined up, and you stare at the empty bookshelf, wondering how people come across good books in the first place.
you’re finishing a book right now that you can hardly stand, but you keep picking it up, half out of morbid curiosity at what everyone else could have read in it.
it’s almost over now yet feels entirely unresolved, with everyone ending up just slightly more depleted than when it began.
and you’re sick and tired of the characters because they’ve all one by one been horrible to each other, so that now none of them are left with your sympathy, and you read with no one to root for, yet it’s well written enough that you know they all deserve your sympathy, if only a little.
and you know, standing above it all, how horribly wrong it all went, but upon reaching the end can’t think of a single thing that could have been done to fix it.
as if together the world and those within it all comprised some shambling, ill-devised automaton, one whose only function is its slow yet inevitable combustion.
you take comfort at least in that there are always more books, more contraptions to be unraveled and collapse as the gears and chains gradually fall out of place and the wheels stop turning.