If there is eye contact to be made, it is with the feet and the spotlights on those feet and the stairs that lead up to the area forbidden to the rest of us.
When you move, stumble, and unfurl on stage, I burn red and look at your shoes. My anxious toe-taps turn into metronomes that dictate the music, a distraction from all sides. Curtains, sudden darkness, blacklight flashes—they offer a chance to wipe the sweat underneath the folding chair. I am so transfixed by the faces of the others, and my inability to look at yours. I steal glances. You’re good. You’re so good. Darkness again.
All the world is cellophane and snack wrappers behind me, hands rolling the flower bouquets on legs closer to the back of the next row’s seats, closer to the stage. I said I’d pelt you with flowers at the end, petals leading down the rows to the back room where I’d celebrate you. Instead, I leave the flowers at home, and petal the the squeeze in the swell of the lines you sing in otherwise silence. The piano carries you, then the rest joins. It’s too much. It’s just right. Intermission.
I used to perform myself—differently, solo, jazz, opera. When you give recitals, it is a chance for family to offer compliments, and strangers critiques. Musicians said I could sparkle, if only I could harness the energy of my second act. It didn’t matter if I was singing into a marble church or sour-sweated practice room, my second act could melt the walls, prick tears in the audience, and black out all light except the rays and comets that touched me. The relief was palpable in caramel sound and the audience who had tensed up just looking at first act me, now given permission to feel. Just relax, they’d say. If you want to do this, you have to relax.
We were ready for you in the first act, and wanted you in the second. I had begun my second act sparkle, permission to feel, permission to relax. My eyes moved up. The beauty of your consistency is that you take that sparkle, plump it up to your visage, and hold that shine steady for the rest of us. Some of us can be found like tight, bound crystals that glimmer specially when the rock that houses us falls and breaks open. We require the sun to display ourselves, reflections. You walk around, unable to turn your light off, driving away nocturnes and attracting the rest. My heart cracks open and hinges forward, showing the crystalline history of blue, purple, green, gold, and pink jags. I know you’re singing it to me, the lullaby. The light you have, searching through the crowd like a lighthouse’s rippled fresnel lens, passes over my heart, and finds the colors it needs. You lock onto it. I know you’re singing to me. I gold-glue the heart back together, quickly, before the tears come. You’re so generous to gift us the steadiness of your artful light. Even if it’s not as dramatic for everyone else, I know they absorb what I consider antidote into squeaking trap doors opening from their eyes, ears, gurgling stomachs, crossed legs, folded arms. We all benefit from this.
You are so tired after. We wait in the back. I move through groups to find you first, but someone else beats me to it. This third act is unscripted, so I direct. I am better at words. I have cold water and dinner for you; I have the flowers I left at home. Take this food, and eat of it. We have just returned home from a church, and I am sitting beside my bedside light, who is sitting beside me. You will do it all again tomorrow.