Entre nous; pas entrez-vous.

I wonder when the past is officially the past?

He kept saying to me that closure was overrated.

"Why do girls need it so much?" he asked me.

I couldn't answer that question. I always fail when questions like that are directed at me in such a bald manner. Of course, he didn't mean for this question to upset me, or for it to produce a speechlessness in me, but it did. I don't know why we need it, or if 'we' need it. I can only speak for myself. I only need that from those whom I have loved to the point of discomfort.

"Just move forward and don't turn back," he said.

"If only it were that easy," I said.

"But it is. And you keep threatening to do that to me."

And that was true. I keep threatening to push past him, not question him about his life or learn about what is going on in a regular fashion--to close the gate of communication. But with him, it can't be deliberate. It would be too performative. It would be as if I were shouting, "This avant garde play in which you and I were main characters is coming to a close! The final act is a upon us, the climax is well behind us and we are in a denoument."

And in his passable French he would say, "Mais oui, mon amie, ca c'est vrai. Ca. C'est. Vrai."

It will happen, but like all things, it takes time. The time that seems intermnible when we are younger. I have forgotten that things take years to digest, or to understand fully.

Instead, I prolong this eventual denoument and wait for closure on something that whether I realize or not, is now relegated to the past.

I am like Friar Bacon, only I am not asleep. But don't you worry, I too have fucked things up and missed the chanting of the Brazen Head:

Time is. Time was. Time is past.

And she. She has said to me many times that it is best just to close up shop, end the play, finish the writing and "For god's sake. Know that it's okay to move on."

The Brazen head has already fallen to the floor.

I suppose then, yes. Yes. And more yes.

Time is, indeed, past.