closure. slamming shut to closure.

M: …this is weird…uh…hows home?

A: Walking home….its like living near a waterfall, you just get used to the sound. …it’s been a long time since I’ve really wanted to become a social creature….i couldn’t live in the house where I was any longer…it was part of my plan, my master plan, my five year plan, to go back home at home point….

M: so no driving factors? You just woke up homesick one day? Seems a little out of place

A: I mean, there were lots of factors, one that packed my bag, one that taped up the boxes…you know.

Me: stop the artsy bullshit andy, I’m asking for an honesty that was never there…just tell me

A: Well ever since you left, I was never there…not leaving my room, anxious….precipitated by the feeling that my world was contracting and collapsing…without building on the gross specifics I had to be hospitalized for what I took and it was the last straw…I needed to get into to place where I wasn’t surrounded by theses constant….. Surrounded by…I mean ….everyone I know is scattered to the winds….as an impairment It’s pretty mind numbing….when you’re 26, it’s not like your whole world comes home for the summer.

M: Gosh andy, you’re such an old geezer


A: Yeah I know, my knees tend to give out on me all the time…what about you? Still a teenager?

M: Everyone needs an excuse for being irrational and whatnot…thats why I don’t want to turn 20…no longer being a teenager means no longer having a fallback excuse…and ….i need an excuse for the…for the…

A: for the world?

M: yeah. Why did you leave santa fe?

A: don’t be straightforward or anything…shit…well, like I told you, I felt I had to…it was a lot of different…

M: grow up. I want nouns.

A: You want an itinerary? You want a bank thing?

M: no, I just sat in the fucking backseat, swooning over you, and you were never ever ever there. I am not that type of girl, and I almost let myself become what I loate. So, THAT is why I’ll always be angry at you, THAT is why I don’t speak to you, and THAT is why I want you to say it once and for all, outloud . I just want you to say for yourself.

A: What do you know?

M: too much. Now admit it to me.

A: What? Because when I met you I was with someone?

M: that I didn’t know….you would have let me fall in love with you and never had told me that?…wow…thanks…but…..uh..but no, that wasn’t what I’m talking about

A:…she and i were sort of an item but sort of not…I had no idea where I was going…I thought that that was where you were going……

M: You never told me any of it…

A: There was a long period where we were’t communicatng…you know? You went to school….and…I mean, I really, I don’t I don’t I don’t get it.

M: I want you to admit to whatever you were taking. Admit that you stood me up, left me waiting for 3 hours in the plaza on my birthday while you were tripping acid. And everyother day was just like my birthday. I knew you did it at the time, I was more angry that you never told me. You have no idea what it means to value someone.

A: Ohhhhhhthats…ohhhh…..i’m clean of everything else but you now…except for cigarettes but what are cigarettes really? I’m in my right mind for the first time in many years… but you and I still…

Me: no….no ‘you and I’….no ‘still’…there never was a ‘you and I’ because you were so fucking selfish with your time, giving it all to your prescious drugs. There will never be a ‘you and I’. how dare you keep telling me how you’re in love with me when I’ve asked you not to call. You never knew me. You can’t love someone when you don’t even know their middle name.


Andy: we are talking on the phone in different states… right? …I mean, I recognize ….i don’t know…uhhh…yeah…I don’t know where I was going with that….i mean, I I I suppose that given the…I I I …hang on…let me marshall my thoughts…I’m totally to blame, even when my phone was working…I just retreated…I don’t think there’s been a day when you haven’t been in my thoughts….

Me: you’re sad, andy. Borderline obsessive. You think writing little pieces of thoughts on notes and giving them to me over the course of one summer constitutes love?! I may not fully know what it means to love someone, yet, but I can tell you that I think it comes at a point where you don’t just get giddy or excited when you see someone, you feel whole….and you found that solace in your drugs. You never knew me, you need to stop telling me you love me, and you need to do this now…..you disappear for two months, telling me nothing, and then resurface and think everything will be okay? You don’t do that to someone you love. You didn’t love me then, and you don’t love me now. Accept that

Andy: that’s just true…I’m not…that’s just true…

Me: you fall off the face of the earth then say I’m in your thoughts everyday…fuck that…do you not see how twisted that is?!


A: Shortly after you left for school I followed a practice of falling apart…I don’t mean to imply that it was your fault…but I was nowhere to be found for anybody…I was surviving…in constant battle with myself…it was a long period where all I wanted to do wall fall away from the world…I broke down or ignored most of the things that I valued…I lived in my head all of the time…it was a very bad period…I don’t think ….i …thiat….i wondered about you a lot… I mean it wasn’t any one thing…it was probably…it wasnt a good year….i…I …I .looking at it now..i see it was extremely melodramatic, and I can look at it from a point of removal…

Me: I don’t care anymore. Im done with this. I’ve been done.

Andy: well?


Me: you are nothing but a memory to me….

A: a pleasant one?

Me: a memory.

A : I could get started to being a person to you again…

Me: again? What you were to me, how you were to me, was nothing humane. You are a memory. You will stay a memory. I have a terrible memory, so you will fade and eventually disappear to me.

A : That’s why I did photography… so I wouldn’t forget you….do you remember what I wrote on your arm the first time we met? Just answer me that and then I’ll go, okay?

Me: you wrote ‘in full bloom’

A: I came across you…and I told you…that I loved you. I wrote it on your arm…I wrote about you.. I didn’t know your last name…. I wrote about how I was happy about meeting you….at the time… I wrote in my journal, “TALKNG TO A GIRL NAME MADELINE…” and I didn’t know your last name so I referred to you as ‘Madeline Who’

M: okay. I want to go now.

A: you shound vexed, are you vexed?

Me: yeah. I’m going to go…

A: I still have that note: “dear andy, your note makes no sense to me. Happy Monday.” that note was underneath a cake at my work…you claim to have no knowledge. …..i like to remember things in my own way…not how they happen.,

M: I’m going.

A: I’ll come back to santa fe sometime.

Me: to me, andy, you’re never coming back.

A: a poetic and anatomical coincidence…it would be extremely disappointing to me to be talking to you at all , in this way, in such a long time so easy and natural but then coming to the conclusion that we wont see each other again…

M: you have to stop this.

A: I wont’ accept tat…I will see you again..


M: Andy, you almost broke me. And you were never worth that.

A: but I loved you then, and I love you now…is that not something worthy of forgiveness? Doesn’t love conquer all?

M: I didn’t love you, you didn’t conquer me, I can never forgive you for what you did. I can never forgive myself for wasting my tears on you. You never did, never could, never would, and never will keep me or have any part of my heart, you were never deserving. You’d never be able or capable of stealing the pieces of my heart from the hands that they’re in now.
---I hang up---

---I wake up to the following phone message the next day:
“From that first day I saw you , I knew you…it was something real, I saw it, I didn’t respect it, I wasn’t in a position to respect anything I saw…you got to say your peace to me, so I get to say my peace to your answering machine….i didn’t manufacture anything, I didn’t respect it, I was in no position, didn’t respect myself…I didn’t respect myself, so I couldn’t respect anything I saw…you couldn’t possilby want to leave it at this...you can't possibly want to leave it like this....bell, I love you, and will love you until I die, bluebell…my bell.