Backwards

I saw a rainbow and wrote this bleak poem

Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

All stories begin at the end.
We see the rainbow and invent the flood,
A dark antagonist for its imposing clarity.

Every time we open our eyes we see a page
Torn from the middle of our book.
Flicking forward is the easy part –
We know it reads ‘The End’.

But what brought us here?
What twists of plots or knives?

We awake each morning on the hangover sofa,
Scrabbling to find the pieces,
Rubbing their edges with shame-numbed thumbs,
Desperate to slot the picture together.

To give us a reason.
A justification.
An excuse.

To paint ourselves as helmsman or flotsam,
Hero or victim.
But someone, in a narrative that makes some sense.

Because we know too well that in The End,
There is none.