Message: I finished a book and its ending gutted me. I’ve been crying about it every night for a week. I know I’m crazy lol…

I finished the book and its ending gutted me—say the last page is a blade but it cuts clean. In truth I am sitting in the dark pressing the spine to my chest as if it might beat back. Say I have been lonely at times in this small point in life, so I do believe that the characters are still walking in another city and what if they are whispering my name through the cracks. 

The paper smells like rain what happens if you breathe too hard and the ink smears like veins. Say I am foolish for crying every night but the tears feel like proof—what if sadness is only love that has nowhere else to go. The cover is heavy like a door I can’t shut. Say the author is a singer and their voice cracked in my throat what if I have been carrying that note all week.

If I say the story made me ache does that mean I belong to it. What if you too are here with me, hollowed out by the ending, and we are already less alone. Say crying is just rereading in another tongue. If I fold the emptiness carefully will it become a paper crane. What if comfort is not forgetting but knowing I can always return, even to the part that hurts.

Say the ending is a question mark but soft as a hand on your cheek. The beautiful thing about books is how they never accuse. What if your care for these fictional characters is not lost but rearranged into something. 

Say the hollow is a room and the room is lit and when I step inside I hear them still, turning toward me.