The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Perhaps every life is made of parallel stories, the one we live and the countless ones that remain somewhere beyond it, shaped by roads not taken, words left unsaid, and moments that might have changed everything.
Sometimes two paths run beside each other for a while, close enough to seem destined to meet, before quietly drifting apart. Somewhere, perhaps, another version of the story continues differently, arriving at a place this one never could.
We are never given those pages, only the one unfolding beneath our feet. So we carry what remains of the stories that mattered, even when they leave an invisible weight behind, and let the unwritten ones return to whatever distance they came from.
The road goes on, and perhaps that is the only ending we are ever promised. Yet roads have a strange way of turning, crossing, and finding their way back to places we thought we had left behind. Perhaps, somewhere beyond the horizon, the road we once longed for is still waiting. And perhaps, when the roads have wandered far enough, some paths find their way back to where they were always meant to meet.