In real life, stories twist like a snake and branch out inconveniently. They can be labyrinthine – a maze that becomes hard to navigate as new pathways develop. So when we write a story down, we search for ways to tie up loose ends. But, in most real stories, tiny threads are hanging out that defy tucking away, and even very true tales are fiction because there is much we either do not know or are not telling.
Sometimes the untold are things you’d only tell confessionally or to a therapist. Perhaps some are things we avoid admitting because of shame or caution.
Others are story-lets. They are fragments of stories with no plot that do not seem to have beginnings and no ends. Like standing in a meadow watching the sunrise and standing next to you is your beloved. Little things like this fit poetry better than prose, and I am no poet, regrettably. Those are the things you’d love to be able to decant into a flask for later enjoyment.
Then there are great arc stories; the resolution is not clear. We all have stories that began years ago but have not been resolved; yet. They are going on, perhaps thousands of miles from us, until they spin back into our orbit for good or ill one day.
Someone once said that “People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them.” Our lives are like that, there is much that we know, lots that we hide away, and then there is the greater unknown resolving off stage.