Finality (September 2025)

 

finality slips through the door like a gentle viper, who goes for the heel with sincerity 

I find finality in most things these days

despite the simple fact that i’ve just graced the legal drinking age 

I feel like a dead man walking 

finality like the once firm and caked bar of soap being sanded down to the size of a small skippable stone 

how nice it is to feel clean, how tiresome it feels to be worn

finality like a premature goodbye to a dull gas station or to a town the size of a thimble

I pass a house every day on my way to work

its a carbon copy of every other house on the block with over grown weeds and a myriad of wind chimes that more often than not hang idle

but the house is special because of the mailbox 

the mailbox sits atop a statue of a golden mermaid with teal details, she has the body of a woman and the face of a little girl

I get to work late most days on account of loitering in front of this mailbox, I’ve done it for three years now

I think the mermaid will be the most cumbersome goodbye of all

I fantasize about waxing poetic on a piece of card-stock about my four years in Virginia and leaving the note tear blotted and wax sealed in the mailbox 

not for those who live in the house, no, I never gave a damn about them

but a note to the mermaid with the body of a woman and the face of a girl

finality slips through the door like a gentle viper and bites my neck in the night

I wake up with the body of a woman, and the face of a woman too.