Parting

"If you have to go away," she said, "is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind?...Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?"
"I don't like to leave anything," the man said. "I don't like to leave things behind."

- Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

I'm graduating from High School, leaving what I know, and an expanse of opportunity is born. When something is born, must something too die? Must the forest burn, for flowers to grow? Yes in 1532 in Cajamarca, yes in 1917 in St. Petersburg, and maybe here too. If it is not dying, then maybe I'll kill it, with shaking and clumsy hands, because it is just easier during the crisis of change, the ecstasy of change, to leave nothing at all behind.