The conclusion

The flowers faded, as always, as time and time again. I had finished my thought and born him in pain, here on my black chair. Time had eaten at him, as I was, but he stood. I had watched you, constantly watching you, while the flowers were blooming and fading, while the summer came and went. Everything was as always, quiet and uninhibited, really uninspired, just as the single life, which left neither traces of snow nor the sand, for fresh snow falls on it and the wind blows away. Perhaps they still remain a little in you, my tracks, a little, until even here time passes them, until nothing remains of this one, small, unimpressive life. And the moment came when I looked up and saw you no longer.

There, at the end of the meadow, where you had always been to your work, there was a half-full laundry basket, while the other part of the laundry hung on the line. In the middle of it, in the midst of this, your being busy, you must have broken off. What was the reason? What was the trigger for this conclusion at a point where there was still no lockable?

During this little life we can decide, always decide again and again whether we want to conclude something and probably when, but then comes the moment when we are decided whether we are ready or not, it is concluded for us. We have no influence on where no justification is needed. It happens rather with us then through us.

And I knew, all of a sudden, I knew that you had not decided to finish, but that your graduation was decided that it was no longer yours.

And the freshly washed, clean clothes fluttered in the wind. Is it really the last picture I would wear of you in me? I could not understand. I had probably thought a lot about it and yet had no idea of this conclusion. Now that I found myself directly affected, now I realized that there was no way to prepare for finality and irrevocability.

Deep, far too deep, you had burnt into me, and I felt myself fall apart, slow and unstoppable. So much had I guarded myself in you and knew that I had now become homeless, now that you had been completed. I had been you to be completely thrown back on an I whom I no longer could name, to something which had been exalted in thee, and now to plunge into the shoals of being thrown back upon myself-and I wished to be nothing but completed. But this grace did not come.

I took my black chair and went, once again I went, but this time there was nothing left which led me back, for even the return would have been a continuation, in view of the fact that you were finished.