How It Ends

We're watching TV when I say, after some hesitation, you know, I left something back in 1996 and
I want to go get it. I know where it is. I'll be back in a flash. Okay, she says, and thinks for a second
before saying, oh, why don't you put some money in Starbucks when you're back? That might do
us some good. Okay, I say. If I remember. Then her brow furrows. She says, I suppose this means
things will be different between us when you come back. Yeah, I say. I suppose that's inevitable. We
were both well versed in the laws of science fiction. Okay, she says, but can you wait till this movie
is over? I want to see how it ends. But we’ve seen this movie before, I say. We know how it ends.
Yeah, she says, but we saw it a long time ago, and we're different people now. It's natural that the
ending will be a little different to us now than it was to us then. Okay, I say, and stick around to
watch the end. And she is right: it is a little different.

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Ian Willey, an English professor from Akron, Ohio, is currently living in a small city in Japan. His poetry can be found online in One Sentence Poems, Unbroken, and MoonPark Review. He has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes, and he has a pet hedgehog.