Returning Home: A Year Without Theatre

We leave a light on at the end of each show.

After the patrons have finished their extra dry martini's and stumbled their way into their late night Uber.

After the front of house sweeps up the candy wrappers and locks the door.

Just shy of when the box office crisply closes the shades.

The theatre is closed. That doesn't mean the theatre is dead.

The lone assistant stage manager, exhausted yet indebted to tradition, manages to wheel the overnight talisman to the center of the stage.

Like leaving the front porch light on when your partner catches a late train home.

Like waving a lantern on land to tell those in choppy waters it is safe here, you are welcome here.

We leave a light on at our home for the next person.

It's common courtesey. And it keeps the ghosts at peace.

...

I would consider the theatre my home.

I spend enough time here.

More so than my studio apartment.

The cold marley floor is more comfortable than my dented boxspring.

As I massage my muscles and drink in the empty seats, I might as well be rocking in my rocking chair with a glass of cold iced tea.

The theatre is my home, the stage is my porch.

Onstage, I can observe all the neighbors, the passerbys - the chatty ones, the loud eaters, the eager ones.

It illicits an eye roll but always out of love.

It is better to be acquainted with the neighboorhood after all.

.........

After the shut down, I found myself on my dented boxspring, hungry for home.

The home that demanded my honesty and my joy, not my rent money.

The home with the nosy neighbors covertly glancing at their phones between the scene transitions

I missed the smell of an empty theatre, replaced immediately by the heat of the story unfolding onstage.

How can I return home if my neighbors can't visit?

To think I whispered about them in the comfort of my rocking chair with iced tea still on my lips

I would give anything to have them over again. Even just for drinks.

I didn't know I had home until I was evicted.

...............

We leave a light on in the theatre for ghosts.

A scorned lover hovering over the fly rails.

An old stagehand sleeping in a puddle of discarded curtains.

The one empty seat in the front row, dedicated to that one gregarious donor, who still crosses his legs right before he is about to laugh.

These were my small comforts as I lay on my dented boxspring for thirteen months.

At least the ghosts will take care of my home.

............

We returned last month.

Frozen in time as if it were March 14th, 2020.

The bulb wasn't burnt out.

The ghosts must have changed it.

............

A small click relieves the ghosts after the endless evening.

The living have returned to my home.

Send for the neighbors and say -

Welcome back.