The Curtain Remembers More Than We Do #poetry

(a confessional to the echo of a stage)

you were there.
weren’t you?
or was it me—
blinking in the prism-light of a theater built entirely from unresolved memories.
the seats whispered beneath us,
red velvet hands clapping before the performance even began.

I swore I saw you bite your lip when the fog machine coughed.
I swore I felt your pulse rise in my neck.

it wasn’t a play.
not really.
not a concert, either.
it was something between gesture and ghost,
an offering that never learned to bow.

they called it "Echoes of Tomorrow’s Bones.”
you laughed.
I wept.
the performance had no cast, no crew—
only shadows wearing light like poorly stitched costumes.

we sat in the 7th row (I counted),
right where the smell of dust and spotlight tears mingled,
and I remember
you handed me a caramel,
its wrapper crinkling like old sheet music.
was that before or after the violinist set her bow on fire?
or was that part of the intermission?

your hands—yes, those—
tapped out morse code on my thigh:
when does the truth begin?
I didn't answer.
I was watching a dancer
cradle silence like a dying swan made of smoke and regret.

you—(don’t pretend you don’t remember)—
turned to me and said,
"this is either the end of civilization
or the beginning of my favorite memory."

I laughed.
or maybe that was the woman behind me.
maybe that woman was me.
maybe that laugh is still lodged in the rafters,
waiting for someone to cue the forgotten scene.

there was a man reciting lines backwards
with a mirror taped to his face.
his voice echoed in the pit of my stomach.
he didn’t blink.
you couldn’t look away.
he said, "I am the monologue of your unfinished thoughts."
and you gasped,
like someone had finally picked the lock of your internal safe.

we clapped.
not with our hands—
with our breath.
with our longing.
with the sound of all the voicemails we never left for people who once mattered.

Act II began when the ceiling collapsed metaphorically.
no dust.
just light.
light like a migraine in love.
light like a preacher losing faith mid-sermon.
light that begged forgiveness for ever being born.

you held my arm.
didn’t you?
or was it the usher
wearing your smile like a borrowed tuxedo?

a girl sang opera in Morse code.
her voice was plum-colored
and sharp around the edges,
a wine glass breaking inside a locked cabinet.
you translated each syllable into my ribs.
I became a xylophone of your interpretations.

when the spotlight spun wildly like a drunk compass
and settled on you—yes, you—
did you feel exposed?
did you feel
for once
like the performance wasn’t just about you,
but through you?

I did.

a juggler tossed planets instead of pins.
Jupiter dropped, rolled, cracked.
from the pieces, a child crawled out holding a saxophone.
he played Miles Davis underwater.
you cried.
or the seat beside me did.

what was real?
I don’t ask that anymore.
I ask:
what was necessary?

and this performance, my dear second self—
this was necessary.

the finale never came.
they forgot to end it.
or maybe we were the finale
and no one told us our cue.

we stood when the applause began
in some other theatre,
in some other dimension,
where the audience is just reflections waiting to be named.

I took your hand.
(it may have been my own).
we walked past curtains that closed behind us
with a sigh
like the last page of a love letter burnt before reading.

outside, the night smelled like citrus and old applause.
you lit a cigarette.
I inhaled the future.
and we never spoke of it again—
the performance that unraveled time
and stitched us into its epilogue.

until now.
until this poem.

so I ask you—

what was the last live performance you saw?
and does it still echo
in your knees
when the world goes dim
and the curtain forgets
which side it's meant to fall on?