—It’s sort of like a story, isn’t it? Of things coming together and coming undone.
—Shitty story.
—How can you be sure?
—There are other people to take care of that.
—Oh.
—So what now?
—Have we ever known? Does anybody know?
—Probably not.
—We’re mistaking this for something far less (or more) complicated.
—What do you mean?
—You know, love, or whatever.
—Love?
—Yes.
—I didn’t know that was in question.
—Don’t you remember how you were broken?
—How could I forget?
—Those walks. So long and heavy.
—You made me take my shoes off once.
—The night it rained.
—I didn’t understand.
—I know.
—Maybe if we had a compass…
—That’d be too easy. We should be desperate, raggedy, semi-coherent, wanting…
—Aren’t we?
—This—this intimacy; these fragments with no real organized continuity;this talk of who is going where and why and when and with whom—would never have continued, or, in the very least, started, had you—had we—not been so stubborn. So goddamn stubborn.
—We like it that way.
—I’m dead serious about all this.
—Absolutely.
—Talking about “potential” and “what ifs”—it was all talk and no action.
—Maybe.
—This is not what I envisioned.
—What did you envision?
—I don’t know. This is all far too…predictable. Or I guess maybe unpredictable. The way we are. All of the things we don’t speak about. It’s always the same thing. It’s always the same dead-fucking-end.
—Hah, yeah.
—Trying is out of the question.
—Right.
—And don’t even think about public engagement.
—Definitely not.
—I hate your stupid shoes.
—We used to joke about them.
—That was then.
