upon finishing his final sentence

the man closed the book and thought about all that was written since he started two months and forty-one days ago:

many amused him, some not as much;

some took more pages, some succinctly put in one or two words;

some were neatly cursive (and slanted upwards), some were scribbles (for the heck of it), some were sketches (when the man couldn’t puzzle himself together), some were doodles (which only he understood);

some had really nice drawings – a few black and white, the others colour-penciled. one was oil-pasteled and took two days and forty-one hours to complete;

one or two sentences followed the existent lines – most didn’t;

some pages were intentionally left blank;

there were a few he didn’t write down himself – the girl, the boy, the woman, the Stranger and the World did. some of them he liked, others not as much;

some were entirely new, most were repetitions (what a waste of good, solid paper, the man thought);

a few pierced through the Heart like a shard (a few pages were torn out) – a few more couldn’t stop It from laughing out loud (these, the man remembered the most).

almost-reluctantly, the man neatly arranged the book along the infinite wooden shelf, alongside the other two hundred and forty-one hundred books in which he had written.

he returned to his desk and found a new, fresh book placed in front of him.

the man cracked his knuckles, reached for his quill, and turned to the first blank page.

will write better this time, the man thought.

and so he started writing again.