Daily Prompt

I’ve always been drawn to books where the author seems to intentionally leave you guessing at the end, or ones that feel unfinished, as if you’re meant to fill in the blanks yourself. There’s a certain intrigue in being left wondering how it could end. It’s almost as if the author is saying, “You write the ending,” and hands the pen back to you.

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is one such book. The novel is built on beginnings — stories that start with promise but are interrupted before they can resolve. Each chapter feels like a doorway into a new narrative, only for the door to close just as you step inside. The effect is both mesmerizing and maddening: you’re constantly suspended in possibility, never given the satisfaction of completion.

That deliberate incompleteness resonates with me because it mirrors life itself. So often, we live through fragments — conversations cut short, plans that never unfold, relationships that remain unresolved. Calvino captures that reality with precision, but he also leaves space for the reader’s imagination to step in. His refusal to finish the stories is not a failure; it’s an invitation.

If I could rewrite the ending, I would do so not to “fix” the book, but to honor the dialogue it creates. I’d weave together the threads he left dangling, offering closure where he withheld it. In doing so, I’d be completing the conversation Calvino began — shaping the story into a circle rather than a series of broken lines. For me, rewriting the ending would be less about correcting the author and more about claiming the role he offered: co‑creator of the narrative.