By Sabyasachi Roy

You ever notice how beginnings get all the glory? Everyone’s obsessed with “the hook.” Grab the reader by the collar, shake them, spill coffee in their lap. But endings—no one talks about the fact that endings are basically a con. Like… “wrap it up neatly.” Excuse me? I can’t even wrap Christmas gifts without duct tape and swearing. You want me to tie a bow on this?

Okay. So here’s the trick to endings: you need momentum, you need a landing, you need resonance. (Yeah, I read that on some blog written by a guy who clearly has never ended anything except his first marriage.) The truth: most endings just stop because the writer got tired. Don’t @ me. You think Hemingway “crafted” that last line? He probably just closed his notebook and went drinking.

I tried. Swear to god i tried. Wrote this story once. Woman wants to move to Cincinnati. (Don’t ask. Seriously don’t.) Built the whole thing. Rising action. Tension. Like an oven preheated at 450. Payoff cocked, aimed, ready. And then—nothing. Flat line. Brain dead.

The draft just sat there. Like a half sandwich in the fridge. Mayo sweating. Lettuce going limp. Mocking me.

So I snapped. Typed it. “She went to Cincinnati. THE END.” that’s it. No balloons. No fireworks. Slam the lid shut. Send it out. Rejection comes back. Handwritten note. Smug little pen scratch: “Your ending feels abrupt.”

OH REALLY. ABRUPT? wow. What a revelation. You cracked the case, Sherlock. Congratulations.

Yes it was abrupt. That was the joke. That was the point.

Writers get obsessed with the big “moment.” The mic-drop sentence. The quote you’ll embroider on a tote bag. But real life doesn’t end like that. Real life ends like: “So anyway, I should head out,” and then someone forgets their phone charger.

And this essay? Same problem. I keep circling. Like a cat who refuses to sit. I could stop here. Or here. Or here. Any of these lines could be the end. But no, my brain’s like: “Hmm, what if you make it meta, acknowledge the ending is hard, then fake-stop, then keep going?” Oh wow, groundbreaking. Someone give me a PhD.

Alright, new attempt: maybe a profound line. Something like, as Mitch Albom famously noted in The Five People You Meet in Heaven, “All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” Sounds good, right? Except it’s also the kind of thing that belongs on a mug in a bookstore cafe. I can’t.

Maybe humor then. End with a joke. Classic. Like: “So that’s my essay. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.” Except everyone’s done that. Or: “The essay explodes. Fade to black.” Eh. Too Tarantino.

Or maybe the fake-grand ending. “And in the end, all stories are just mirrors, and the writer only ever writes themselves.” Ha! Look at me. Pretending to be wise. That’s not an ending. That’s a wool sweater of nonsense.

Okay, breathe. Think of strategies. Some people use callbacks—tie the end back to the start. Circle around. Alright, let me try: remember when I said beginnings get all the glory? Yeah. Still true. This ending? This is the leftovers. The cold pizza of prose.

I could just trail off. People do that. Essay ends mid thought, like—

…

Or I could admit the truth: I don’t want this to end because then you’ll stop reading and I’ll be alone with my open document and my snack wrappers. And then I’ll have to start the next piece, and oh god, beginnings again.

Here’s another option: brute force. Just slap “THE END” like a sledgehammer. But that feels cheap.

See, I’m still here. Still typing. Padding out word count like a high schooler hitting the minimum. Except I already passed 600 words, I think. Which means technically I could stop. Right now.

But also… maybe one more line.

Just in case.

Okay fine—this is the end.

Probably.

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Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.