It’s one of the most honest things I’ve ever read.

I’m still struck by the ending. Christopher leaves his reader with an ellipsis; three successive periods, composed on a manual typewriter, their depressions rendered with an almost gentle violence, each one as perfect as a moon.

Did he slip and fall?

Did he collapse from exhaustion?

Did some vital pinion inside him snap in half from frustration or jealousy or endless yearning?

Or was it a matter of the heart even more treacherous than that: loneliness.

Was he drunk with the night sky? Spellbound by the infinitesimal swaying of these ancient trees?

Or did he stage his own death?

Were there footprints?

Did this park imagine his body?

Would that be a better image?

(The lights fade on Bella.)

END OF PLAY

ADAM RAPP is an award-winning playwright, director, novelist, and filmmaker. He is the author of numerous plays, including Nocturne (American Repertory Theater, New York Theatre Workshop), Finer Noble Gases (26th Humana Festival; Edinburgh Fringe, Fringe First Award), Stone Cold Dead Serious (A.R.T., Edge Theatre), Blackbird (Bush Theatre, Edge Theatre), Essential Self-Defense (Playwrights Horizons/Edge Theatre), The Metal Children (Vineyard Theatre), The Hallway Trilogy (Rattlestick), Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling (Atlantic Theater Company), The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois (Southcoast Repertory, Atlantic Theater Company), and Red Light Winter (Steppenwolf, Barrow Street Theatre; Chicago’s Jeff Award for Best New Work, Obie Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist).

His playwriting honors include Boston’s Elliot Norton Award, the Helen Merrill Award, the 2006 Princess Grace Statue, a Lucille Lortel Playwright’s Fellowship, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award.

He is also the author of the novels Know Your Beholder, The Year of Endless Sorrows, and nine works of fiction for young adults, including Under the Wolf, Under The Dog (finalist Los Angeles Times Book Prize); Punkzilla (Michael L. Printz Honor Book); and 33 Snowfish (Booklist’s 50 Best YA Books of All Time).

He also wrote and directed the feature films Winter Passing (Official Selection of the 2005 Toronto Film Festival) and Blackbird (2006 Edinburgh International Film Festival, Best Narrative Feature at the Charlotte Film Festival, Special Achievement in Directing Award from the Florida International Film Festival).

He lives in New York City and Woodstock, New York.