“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, I told him, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

P1: This is just goodbye for now. Don’t worry, we will see each other again.

P2: I won’t say that this is not goodbye, because that is simply not true.

P1: Don’t be so harsh now.. you don’t always have to put things in such blunt terms. It’s such a beautiful full moon tonight that it’d be a shame to ruin it.

P2: Goodbye means I may or may not see you again, but if we do then it will be in a different setting and with us as very different people. So for the two of us standing here crying and hugging each other goodbye, this is goodbye for good, because this scene will never repeat and play back again; you will never be the same quotidianly familiar person to me going forward and I will never be 24 and this idealistic again. Let’s not kid ourselves.

P1: Well, if you put it that way…

P2: I’m not putting it any way except the way it actually is. I don’t like bending the truth and blurring the lines. I like things to be given to me straight and true.

P1: To be or not to be, that is the question.

P2: Be what? That is the question.

P1: Be mad with you. After all, you are ruining our last night here together by being so sulky and pessimistic.

P2: I am not being sulky; I am just being realistic. I mean, how did you expect our last night here to be like? There sure isn’t any more romance left in these parts, because reality is coming right after us at the stroke of twelve. Like Cinderella, our fluffy dreams of carriages will turn into pumpkins and leave us to clean up the the entire patch of mess.

P1: Well at least we can clean it up together!

P2: No, that is not possible. We must go our separate ways after twelve.

P1: Must we? I really don’t want to.

P2: It’s not a choice for us to want or not. Life has tapped us on our shoulders and turned our heels upon different paths now. Our time together e’ finito! Tutti morti..   Tutti frutti..

P1: I see how it is.. you just don’t want me here anymore! Don’t blame it on stupid pumpkin patches and life personified. We are the only persons standing here trying or not trying to work things out. We are the masters of our time!

P2: [quietly] And time is up..

P2: Silly silly… silly. You still don’t get it but you will soon enough.

P1: Don’t patronize me. I am not silly; I am just not a coward.

P2: MoooOOOoooOOOoooo…!!!

P1: Stop it. No use crying over split milk. I’m just feeling so sour and rotten now that I just want to go home. Tell the coward I said goodbye forever. I am udderly mad.

P2: WAIT.

P1: What am I waiting for? God? oh! No.. spare me the waiting. Inaction will kill me tick by tick.

P2: I just thought you would like to have this..

P1: What is it? A USB stick? It’s cute… and of utility, so thank you?

P2: Promise me you will never forget me.

P1: Promise me you will never forget you.