Not the End

I can see you, after I’ve gone.
You stand in the doorway, one hand on the knob; maybe you’re wondering if you should have come in.

The room is almost empty now.
There are boxes by the door. The room barren but the desk, and the odds and ends left inside it.

You can never remember it being so clean.
So many times you chastised me on the virtues of cleanliness. So many times you shut the door as not to see the mess

I’ve been gone for a while now, you know.
I’d been to college for just one year; it’d been nearby but you only just realize it was the start of something more.

When I told you about the service you were doubtful.
A sailor so messy and lazy? So creative and unlawful?

You smiled knowingly as if to show you knew best.
I didn’t tell you the day I swore in. Only later did I tell you how I’d joined.

I don’t know if you felt left out.
The decision was mine. I didn’t want to share it until I was sure.

Months you danced around me, awkwardly evading the inevitable.
At the goodbye party we cried. You held me so hard I thought I’d break. Maybe you thought that, too, but you didn’t let go.

I spent years living in your house.
The house of your parents. Was it lonely living there after they’d gone; knowing it had once been theirs?

It’s almost empty now.
You think of me now, your youngest bird. Belated, but she’s left the nest and you behind.

I remember the fights.
I’d beg to see mom early. I know it hurt you. You could tell I would never be as close to you as I was her.

I don’t know when we started to grow apart.
We danced around each other for years, hoping to reach a middle ground; maybe too long to ever find it.

You look at the barren room.
You can reach the ceiling now, to mend the cracks you never could while I was there.

You could sell the house, now
I don’t know that you would. The house of your parents, the house you grew up in as well.

I sit in a hotel room at dawn.
It’s the next day. It’s the start of my new life and it’s time for me to leave now.

I don’t know if you feel it.
I don’t know if you feel me pine to you from the hotel room. I wish we’d been closer, I wish I’d thought to try to get closer to you.

You quietly shut the door to what was my room.
The ceiling can wait for another day. The boxes can wait for another day.

I open the door of my hotel room.
Today is the last day of life as I know it.

I know I will survive.
But will I be the same when I come back? How will my life and my being change?

I hope you feel my heart reaching out to you.
I will come back, I promise. I will make things right.

I will not let this be the end.