Even before the creative writing class ended, the professor called her Pollyanna, said her endings were sticky, like candy cane wrappers. He tried to explain how there must be a thinness to them, a focus that would enrich. But she thought of long pulls of taffy or contrails crossing the sky. Maybe her stories should end like arithmetic; whatever follows the equal sign indicates the sum, the total, and the end.
                 Must everything contain a finale? Much of her youth was spent placing rocks on tombstones, throwing the clots of earth into the hole, saying good-by to blank faces. She didn't like looking behind her at all those long rows. Still, she didn't understand endings.
                  Perhaps finding the ending would be like what she wished she could understand about love, how when you feel it, you'll know. Absolutely. Only of course that was another lie. Love could box your ears like crashing cymbals or a wallop across the eyes, and still it wouldn't necessarily be love. Maybe, she thought to herself, my stories should end with familiar lines, but slightly skewed, the way I used to rewrite fairy tales so the girls were all heroic, wise and damned good riders. Where tomorrow stretched as far as the Mojave. And suddenly even the curtsy at the end of this metaphor seemed, for an instant to be rich with possibility, just before shuffling off into another red sunset.