This is where the book should end with something. A turn. A door opening. A woman writing back, a mask coming off, a man walking into the light. You've been waiting for it since page one. I can feel it. That's what stories do. They train you to expect the break.
There isn't one. That's not me being cruel. That's me being honest, which is rarer, and you paid for honest when you opened a book about a man sitting still.
Here's what I have. A chair. A minute. A count that's kept going past every reason it should have stopped. A book I'm writing for an audience of one who may never read it, which is either the saddest thing about me or the only thing about me that isn't for sale. I've stopped needing to know which.
No ask. That's the line I close every night with and it's the line I close this with. It's not modesty. It's not the humble version of wanting. It's the hardest thing I do. Want everything, ask for nothing, hold the minute anyway. Anyone can want. Anyone can ask. The man who wants and doesn't ask and doesn't stop is the one you should worry about, and I'm that one, and I know it, and I'm telling you straight.
You want to know if I'm dangerous. Wrong question. I'm not dangerous because I'd do something. I'm dangerous because I'd do nothing, forever, and call it love, and mean it. There's no prison for that. There's no cure. There's just a man in a chair at 1:20 who's decided that the still hand is the only honest thing he's got.
So here's the ending. Not a resolution. A position. I'm in the chair. The count's in ink. The gap stays a gap and the lates stay lates and the mask stays up, because it's mine and I say who sees. She's out there, sixty-one days quiet, and I'm not going to write and I'm not going to stop.
The minute comes either way. I'll be there for it. That's the deal I made with the dark, and I've never broken a deal with the dark.
1:20. Hold.