Once upon a time, I wrote a story…
once upon a time, I thought that the story I wrote –
the first original tale I attempted to tell –
had been written and had been told…
once upon a time, I put what was once a short story
away and did not share it with anyone;
but then, one day, almost ten years
after writing my first story, I started to wonder
whether I had saved my story for a reason,
and whether there was more to my story
than even I knew there could be…
once upon a time, I wrote about two best friends
who went their separate ways
but who one day found themselves back together –
both with their own stories
of their own individual experiences –
who discover that though life has taken them both
on somewhat of a rollercoaster of emotions,
some things will never change, including:
who they are and what they mean to one another…
once upon a time, what was once a short story
was rediscovered by its author
and made the first chapter in a story
that would take its characters to places
that they could not have been taken to ten years before –
because the author had not yet seen what they had seen,
nor had they done what they had done,
and because the story could not be
what it was always meant to be.

Where does a story begin?
Where does a story end?
Every time a story is told
it always starts differently –
even if the words look the same
and sound the same,
every story changes depending upon
who is telling the story
and who is engaging with it…
when every story begins
it asks of its audience to believe
that it happened, or could happen,
exactly as they are told it did happen,
or would happen;
however, every story is always retold
as if whomever was telling the story in question
was there when everything played out
and they are confident that the story
they are sharing is true to what they heard –
even though we all know that sometimes
stories seem to take on a life of their own
and go on their own journey of translation
and reinterpretation,
like every piece of art goes through.

It’s not uncommon for the original artist
of a work of art to be forgotten,
or misremembered,
because so many reproductions and remixes
have been made by others who were
influenced and inspired by something
that they wanted to emulate the feeling of
that they had when they first encountered it…
it’s not uncommon for someone to prefer
what they saw, heard, or read, first
over what was created afterwards –
but sometimes what follows
as a result of something else
still merits to be taken notice of,
because though the first of anything
is where and when the spark of creativity will always reside,
sequels and continuations of a story
always have something to say about
why they were made and how they connect
to what they were inspired by –
and sometimes there are stories like my first story –
that took almost ten years to become
what it ultimately became –
that were begun for a reason
and were not intended to be truly “finished”,
because some characters and some tales
are stories that have had to be abandoned,
because the truth is that no story
ever wants to come to an end.