Done

This poem offers a simple instruction for meeting endings.

Rather than trying to revive what has already run its course, it asks us to acknowledge the ending, make room for the grief it brings, then continue forward.

Acceptance does not require the absence of mourning. But lingering in it—or going back to the old cycle—is its own self-betrayal.

Sometimes acceptance means allowing what is done to be well and truly done.

I have sometimes struggled to let endings remain endings.

There can be a temptation to keep returning—to reconsider, renegotiate, search for another interpretation, or wonder whether something that has ended might somehow be made alive again.

This poem is a reminder that there comes a point when continuing to revisit what is over no longer serves us.

That doesn't mean pretending it didn't matter.

The final lines are important to me because they hold two movements together:

Mourn.
Go forward.

Grief honors what was meaningful.

Moving forward honors what remains possible.

Neither asks us to diminish the past. But neither requires us to remain there.

Sometimes there is nothing more to understand, repair, or resurrect.

Sometimes the work is simply to grieve what has ended, let it be over, and keep living.