It never got a goodbye

Jobs get a last day. People get funerals. Houses get one slow walk through the empty rooms before you hand back the keys. This one got nothing. There was a last one, and it felt like any other. Then a date, and silence. Part of you is still standing in that empty house, waiting for the ending.

An ending nobody marked keeps asking to be marked. It shows up as a faint tug on an ordinary evening, a sense that this isn't really over. That's an unfinished goodbye as much as a craving. The cigarette ran a lot of your days, and it would love a reunion tour. You don't owe it one. You owe yourself an ending.

A goodbye does one job. It moves something out of the present tense and into the past, where you remember it instead of living it. Skip that step and it stays open in the back of your head. Say it properly and the whole thing gets filed. God knows endings. He's walked people out of harder houses than this one.

Tonight, write it a short letter on the back of an envelope. Three lines. What it gave you. What it took. Why you're leaving anyway. Clumsy is fine. Then fold it in half, or tear it up, your call. Pray the last line. It's over. Help me keep it over. Ten minutes, the keys go back, and you walk out owing it nothing.