The Debt of the Epilogue

I didn't buy this copy, but I'm the one who finished it.

There’s an oil stain at the bottom of the final page

where a thumb once rested, heavy with the weight

of a story that didn't end the way they wanted.

Behind the word 'Farewell' sits a flattened clover,

brown as a scab and thin as a human hair.

Someone meant to keep this luck forever

but left it trapped in a plot about a murder.

It feels like eavesdropping on a closed room.

I am holding their ghost in my lap

while the sun goes down over the spine,

leaving us both in the dark.