There are six open documents on the desk, though the desk itself is empty.
Each contains the beginning of something. A sentence that still seems promising. A question waiting for an afternoon. Together they create the peculiar weight of work that has been started everywhere and finished nowhere.
I choose the smallest piece. For an hour, the others are allowed to remain as they are. The work becomes more ordinary as I stay with it, and that ordinariness makes an ending possible.
Finishing rarely feels as dramatic as beginning. There is a final adjustment, a rereading, a moment when further changes would simply be changes.
Then one document closes. The space it leaves is larger than I expected.