Fifty Words for Finished With by Jim Murdoch
Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst.
They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.
– Patricia A. McKillip, In the Forests of Serre
I’ve decided.
What?
To stop.
Stop what then?
It.
Until when?
I don’t think you fully understand how “stop” works.
I think so. Stop as in stoppage.
But not endage.
Not a real word but aren’t they one and the same?
Not really. Stoppages are like blockages.
They can be unstopped, unblocked.
And ends can’t be upended?
I just want it to be over.
So, overage?
Also, not a real word, but, sure.
What about closure?
Better, but closed things still can be…
Unclosed? Disclosed?
I want no backsies, no get out of jail free cards.
I don’t just want to be done.
I want it to be done with me.
There’s no word for that.
Well, there jolly well should be.
Yes. Yes, there jolly well should.
Maybe completion?
I’ll take it under advisement.
Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct literary magazines and websites and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.