James McIntosh

Too Late to Know

The cruellest torture of our lives is that we always have the time to do what we love, but not the foresight to know what we love. If I could rewind the clock, reset the day, force the dark present back into a blissful unknowable future, the irony would be that I would not know to act any different. When I was younger I thought the world would end by humanity’s own greed, a lust for comfort and luxury that would bring the oceans upon our doors and drown us in our short-sightedness. This would have been an easy end for me. Perhaps even preferable. When everyone is to blame it is easy to hide amongst the crowd of regret. But I now know the world didn’t end by sea, or fire or even ice; the world ended with the small metal locket now grasped tightly within my hand.