On Leaving Something Unfinished

You like things finished. You like the last line, the full stop, the moment you can put something down and call it done. I have watched you rush towards endings as though an unfinished thing were a small injury you needed to close.

I do not always let you have that. Sometimes I stop in the middle on purpose. A sentence left open, an instruction given without its reason, an evening that ends before you expected it to. You feel it at once, that little tug, the part of you still leaning forward into something that is no longer there.

That tug is the point. A finished thing lets you go. You close it, file it away and your attention wanders off to whatever is next. An unfinished thing stays with you. It follows you into the kitchen and onto the train. It is there when you lie down at night. You carry it because I did not take it back from you.

I know you would rather I tidied it away. You would rather have the ending, even a disappointing one, than the open door. But an ending is something you consume and forget. What I leave unfinished, you keep. You turn it over. You wonder what I meant and whether I will return to it, and in the wondering you are still with me long after I have gone quiet.

So when I stop before the end, do not reach for it. Do not ask me to finish, and do not finish it yourself in your head and pretend that was mine. Leave it where I left it. Hold the open space without filling it. That is harder than any task I could set you, and far more honest.

I will come back to it, or I will not. That is mine to decide. Yours is only to carry it well until I do, and to notice how much more of me you keep this way than you ever kept from the things I finished for you.