Postscript

The postscript caresses and dwells in/on the material and textural afterlives of Kathy Acker and Cookie Mueller, illuminating the nonlinear temporal forces of their sartorial envelopes (a crochet glove; a sailor-stitched jacket: inside-out intimate things full of presence and absence) and meditating on them as reminders of the enduring, never-finished, belated project of “close writing.” In a life-writing gesture, the postscript brings the author's own grandmother's material things (that includes a bronze letter opener) into contact with her writerly beloveds. This gesture leads the author to withdraw the close of a signature by way of conclusion and ritual, unfolding the structure and scene of close writing to be itself an open envelope alive with love-in-pieces. Within these open loops of connection and separation, life touches death touches life.