„Is it okay to microwave vodka?“, I ask my witch at 4 AM as if she‘d know. „My tea got cold.“
And she giggles. „Why is there even tea in your vodka?“
Yes, it is that way around. Not the other.
Why?
Because I once again have to deal with questions I can only ever ask my witch about.
I am thinking about the ending. The ending of a story.
And what it means.
„Because there is someone I can‘t face anymore“, I whisper as Layla hands me the steaming cup out of the microwave with her witching hands that can withstand heat in a way I will never know.
„And I have to accept the end of a chapter once and for all“, I add.
Yes, this one is not about furiously clinging on to a faint hope, or about not accepting a goodbye as long as it has not been announced and executed correctly.
This one is about having to accept one of those.
„Oh how wonderful“, Layla sighs as she steals the cup from my cold hands again and takes a passionate gulp. „Tell me a hopeless tale!“
Is it a hopeless tale?
I cannot tell.
What does the ending mean for a story?
Does the ending define us?
As a writer, I would say that the ending can ruin a good story. It has to be well thought through and to really sum things up and put them into the light you want the reader to take with them.
But when is life summed up nicely ever?
And now I see my witch looking hauntingly beautiful as she steals my journal from my desk and lights a candle to read it. “While we’re at it, how do I end?”, she demands to know and there is a fear in her eyes that makes me shiver. “I don’t want to die as young as the portrait you like to put up on the wall, and I don’t want to end up wrinkly and lonely either.” And the pages run through her shaking ends. “If you have a girl in your story, you should respect this! I don’t want to be punished for my bad decisions and end up dead, or raped or whatever.”
And I take the journal from her hands, before she could set it on fire.
Noted. Having her end well is a huge task for a mess like me.
„It‘s about someone I lost long ago“, I admit to my witch and take an even more passionate gulp of what tastes like medicine. Is there even real tea in this vodka at all?
„I was at peace with him having moved on, as long as he was out there.“ This tastes like medicine, which it actually is for my soul tonight.
„And now?“, Layla asks.
Does the ending define us?
Will the ending always add a shadow and the trace of pain to a bright moment of the past?
Does remembering a bright moment simply mean to rebel the knowledge of what is now?
Does the shadow change its colors? Are they getting colder?
Are they not as bright and sparkling and threaten to be hidden under a sheet of ice?
Does the ending define who we are in the end?
„Now, I got some conflicting, unwanted information“, I tell Layla and my throat closes up. „And I really wish I hadn‘t. I really wish I hadn‘t spend a cold and lonely November night clicking through some old chat windows that were silent for more than 5 years, to see a photo of that someone.“
The vodka we are having came from Poland and has a straw of bison grass in it.
My eyes are heavy already.
Are things still worth happening? Do they happen just so they exist? Even if the colors fade and all their essence will freeze up in time?
Was it simply worth to have them for brief moment?
Or are we supposed to take something with us?
A sparkle?
A thought?
An idea?
Something for the days to come to recharge the energy that once was there?
„A recent photo?“, my witch asks as I stare into distance.
And I nod until I‘m dizzy. „One that shows him ill. Like, deadly ill.“
Layla refills my cup and we simply forget about the tea this time.
„I was okay with that someone moving on and living a life somewhere, but I still care if it actually happens or…“
I cannot follow down that thought.
When I think of the moment this friend belonged to, my heart feels warm, although I did not keep a single thing in my life. I changed my main subject of studying shortly afterwards. I lost all of the other friends of those moments for tragic reasons and we all moved on.
But I wish to know if that friend lives or dies, and I am not in a position to do so anymore.
Thinking back to all of us in our early 20s, I never thought we would end up scattered like this, and my heart feels wound. I think of a white hot chocolate and of cupcakes. I think of book stores and of buying the whole discography of Patti Smith on an afternoon in January when there was snow. I think of bushy hair to play with, which now is gone, but belonged to someone who taught me to speak English.
And I wonder what the sparkle could be that I could still take with me. Maybe, it is the realization that I write because of things like this. Not just to survive these emotions that are trying to suffocate me, but to capture these moments. To turn them into stories, into art, into something to remember them by. To preserve them.
Because this ending, it seems, I have to accept.
Mistress witch writes 