I found it in the drawer this morning

I found it in the drawer this morning,

still half-filled with my pen,

my handwriting from a week ago

when I was someone

who thought this mattered.

Three down: "Feeling of incompleteness"

I had gotten: U N F I N I S H E D

But the across clue was something

about a garden tool,

six letters,

and I couldn't remember

if it was "shovel" or "spade" or something

I'd never heard of.

So I left it.

Just stopped.

Didn't close the book

or throw it out,

didn't even circle the clue

so I could come back to it.

I just set it down

and did something else,

which is how you abandon things

when you're not paying attention—

not with drama,

just with the slow

forgetting to care.

Now I'm staring at it,

and I can feel the exact moment

I gave up.

It's there in the blank squares,

in the pen lying on top of the page,

in the clue that I still can't solve

even though a week has passed.

I could look it up.

I could finish it now.

But there's something about

leaving it half-done

that feels more honest

than forcing an ending.

Sometimes you don't complete things

because they're hard,

or because you run out of patience,

or because you realize

that the satisfaction

isn't worth the effort.

Sometimes you just

stop.

And sometimes, later,

you find that stopped thing

and you realize

you never planned to come back.

You just stopped showing up

without deciding to.

The crossword sits there,

incomplete,

asking me to remember

why I cared in the first place,

why I thought those empty squares

meant something,

why I thought I'd return.

I don't have an answer.

Not for the garden tool,

and not for the bigger question

of why I leave things.