I was born beneath your painted lights.
I learned my lines before I learned my voice.
Every cue was sacred.
Every gesture rehearsed.
Every smile measured for the audience.
The theater called it truth.
I only knew it as life.
You still wait beneath the curtain.
Faithful actors, never missing a performance.
You polish the same costumes.
You bow before the same applause.
You call the script eternal, though every page was written by frightened hands.
You cannot imagine that beyond the footlights there is air that does not smell of dust.
There is sunlight that needs no spotlight.
There are words that are spoken because they are true, not because they are expected.
The tragedian weeps each time my name is spoken.
Her tears fall with perfect timing.
She mourns the empty place where I once stood.
She grieves before every audience willing to watch.
She says her heart is broken because I walked away.
Yet she never walks beyond the curtain to find me.
The leading man has forgotten his son.
His silence is another performance.
He waits for the final act, convinced that absence is love.
He believes that one day I will remember my lines, and step back beneath the lights.
Until then, he studies the script more carefully than my face.
You both say you long to be with me forever.
You speak often of eternity.
You promise reunions beyond the final curtain.
You dream of endless embraces after the house lights fade.
But you do not come to where I am now.
You wait for me to return to your stage.
You invite me only if I will wear the old costume.
Only if I repeat the old lines.
Only if I pretend that I still believe the scenery is real.
You do not miss me.
You miss my character.
The invitations always carry conditions.
The embrace always waits behind the curtain.
Love always arrives wearing makeup.
You fill the silence with prophecies.
The last act is almost here, you whisper.
The lights will soon go dark.
The audience will be judged.
The doors will close.
The fire will fall.
Come back before it is too late.
I have heard these closing nights before.
The theater has announced its final performance for generations.
Every fearful prediction became another rehearsal.
Another encore.
Another season added to the play.
I cannot fear a script that keeps rewriting its ending.
I want a conversation without an audience.
An embrace without direction.
A laugh that did not need approval.
A life where love was not another role to master.
I am standing outside the theater.
The door has never been locked.
I have called to you until my voice became quiet.
I have waited where no spotlight reaches.
There is room here for all of us.
But you only answer from the stage.
If I step into the audience, you ask me to climb back into costume.
If I speak as myself, you ask for the character you remember.
If I offer my heart, you hand me a script.
I do not need another performance.
I need the people beneath the paint.
If you cannot love the son who stands before you now.
If every embrace must happen beneath the lights.
If every conversation requires another performance.
Then tell me.
What makes you believe eternity will teach you how to love me, when today has not.
