A Poet’s Endgame

What if the puzzle was never meant to close,
only to be turned slowly, like a worry stone
warmed by the thumb?

I lift the old idea of answers
and see its underside: dust, fingerprints, history.
Is purpose a destination we miss by inches,
or a way of walking that changes the ground beneath us?

When we call something ordinary,
are we only failing to look at it long enough?

The mind, when stuck, becomes a stalled elevator
between floors, between names for what hurts.

I have stood there listening to cables creak,
thinking this pause was failure.
But what if stillness is the body refusing to lie?

A line forms, gentle as a hand on the back:
stay—this is not the end, only a resting place.
Is solace found in moving on,
or in realizing we don’t have to move at all?

If there is an endgame, perhaps it is this:
not mastery, not escape, but balance,
to stand inside the question without collapsing.
I write to slow the spinning,
to stitch stillness into a mind that wants to run.

Does the poem solve anything
or does it simply remind the soul
that it is not broken—only thinking,
and therefore still alive finding shape

and rendering the heart less alone for having spoken?