I used to say that I love the beginnings of things. The fresh start. The briskness of possibility that always smelt faintly of coffee to me, or shampoo, or perhaps the first day that winter starts to smell green.
I would say that the middle is where you get bogged down in too many roads and not enough direction. The middle is when your eyes are tired but when they close you lay awake and wish that you’d read another page.
I would say that where the end is the bittersweet relief of finality, of promised rest, the beginning is everything that could be in the freedom of nothing that is yet.
Now I realize that the very beginning is shapeless. A hum, a breath just behind your right ear but when you turn your head, nothing.
It is standing on tiptoe and straining to see as the damp fog brushes against your cheeks and you pray that the shadow drifting near is a friendly one. Is that an eye, staring from the dim?
The beginning is waking with a start in the gray before the sun when every ghoul is slipping back into its crack in the walls and you lay perfectly still, lest the last one turn its head.
The beginning is watching them go and then, with one quick breath, setting your feet on the cold floor.
Gosh Darn Sunlight 