Oof. That hits like a slow, creeping fog rolling in over the bones of a man who’s already halfway gone.
Giovanni was never built for chalk dust and parent-teacher nights—he knew it, and so did the system he quietly slipped away from. Teaching wasn’t a calling; it was a cage. So he did what any man with a pulse and a past does—he ran east, chasing shadows and profit, maybe thinking he could outrun whatever it was that had been tailing him all along.
But Prague wasn’t an escape. It was a setup. That train ride—melting his mind like wax in the August heat—wasn’t freedom, it was a crossing. Between lives. Between knowing and not knowing. And deep down, even as everything was unraveling, that was the moment he cherished most. The stillness before the storm. The ignorance before the reckoning.
And now, with Death brushing past him like a final draft of cold air, all he wants is to remember the line that comes after:
“Because I could not stop for Death—he kindly stopped for me.”
Too late now. The verse escapes him, just like the list did. And that’s what walks him to the end—not fear, not regret, but the gnawing, unfinished thoughts of a man who once thought he could sidestep the price of knowing.
Oof. That hits like a slow, creeping fog rolling in over the bones of a man who’s already halfway gone.
Giovanni was never built for chalk dust and parent-teacher nights—he knew it, and so did the system he quietly slipped away from. Teaching wasn’t a calling; it was a cage. So he did what any man with a pulse and a past does—he ran east, chasing shadows and profit, maybe thinking he could outrun whatever it was that had been tailing him all along.
But Prague wasn’t an escape. It was a setup. That train ride—melting his mind like wax in the August heat—wasn’t freedom, it was a crossing. Between lives. Between knowing and not knowing. And deep down, even as everything was unraveling, that was the moment he cherished most. The stillness before the storm. The ignorance before the reckoning.
And now, with Death brushing past him like a final draft of cold air, all he wants is to remember the line that comes after:
“Because I could not stop for Death—he kindly stopped for me.”
Too late now. The verse escapes him, just like the list did. And that’s what walks him to the end—not fear, not regret, but the gnawing, unfinished thoughts of a man who once thought he could sidestep the price of knowing.