"It just kind of sucks though."

"Why?"

"Because it’s over."

"Oh…right. That hurts."

"I’m not gonna cry."

"Me neither."

"I might cry."

"Yeah, but you shouldn’t. We’ve had a good run, even if we limped part of the way."

"Wow. That’s a really sad way of putting it."

"Sorry. It just came to me, you know? The image of us struggling around a track, dragging our feet with bloody socks."

"Ha…(sniffle) that’s pretty morbid, James."

"Yeah, I suppose it is."

"Bloody socks?"

"Popped blisters…popped blisters bleed."

"How did we get blisters?"

"We ran too fast, had no idea of pacing."

"You’re metaphors..."

"What about ‘em?"

"I think you’re metaphors sometimes keep you from reality."

"No, they just help me deal with it by breaking it down into tangible terms."

"No they don’t."

"Yeah they do."

"Listen, every time some issue comes to light that needs to be dealt with, you start up some wild comparison that’s clever but meaningless."

"It’s called relativity. I like figuring how one thing I know well can relate to another I’m unsure of. "

"It’s called preoccupation. You compare before you even think it through. Seriously, James…Track? We’re not running Track here!"

"Well, yeah…not anymore."

"We never were! We were dating!"

"I know. But a relationship is like Track: it’s the cyclical journey, the endurance and sweat. I think it must have gone over your head."

"I get it! It’s just oversimplified."

"You’re the one who wanted me to stop over-analyzing things. You said, as I recall, ‘Fuck your thought-induced paralysis!’ So I did. I tidied up my processing of interpreting events. I set up it up in little pieces."

"I never said that! I said that maybe your time spent pacing and spitting out bits of sentences in a gloomy voice was, I don’t know, a bit useless."

"Useless, thanks. My time spent in thought is useless."

"James…"

"No no no. You said it, not me. My thoughts are a ‘bit useless.’ Yes. I should learn to have a more autonomous and crude mind, one that thinks only when asked to think. Fucking lovely."

"Ah, don’t go emo on me. I’m trying to help."

"I’m trying to leave."

"Hey! Just listen: there has to be a gray area between crippling sessions of pondering and half-baked metaphors. At least there should be."

"There should be a lot of things that aren’t."

"Nice. See? Right there, you didn’t complicate or avoid the meaning of your thoughts. You just came right out and said: There should be a lot of things that aren’t. Nice. How come you don’t do that more often?"

"I rarely achieve moments of clarity the way you do with statements like ‘Fuck your thought-induced paralysis’."

"James, I sincerely do not remember saying that."

"I sincerely do. You were wearing that shit-green sweater you always wear in winter, when you said it."

"Many things were said in that sweater but not that."

"That sweater was horrendous."

"It was a gift."

"It was a horrendous gift, then."

"Yeah, well, I like it."

"You would."

"Shut up."

"Done and done."

" "

" "

"So…"

"Huh?"

"I just said, ‘So’."

"Oh."

"Are you…?"

"Am I gonna what?"

"Are you going to be all sad and distant now? You know, now that we’re, you know, not, um, what we once were?"

"Probably. Stick with what you know, that’s my motto."

"That motto got us into this…this weird mess. You, I mean we, never try anything new. We’re just convenient comforts to another."

" "

"Say something."

" "

"Fucking stop looking off and say something. You’re not posing for a grunge album cover."

"Oddly enough, I was thinking about how This Weird Mess would be a great album name, you know? Hopeless and chaotic…like, like…"

"Please leave."

" "