Necessity is the mother of deception.
Confession is good for the prosecutor.
The squeaky wheel
is quietly replaced.

An empty wallet
keeps the doctor away.
A fool and his money
are the foundation
of our financial system.

The early bird
catches the worm,
and is welcome to it.

What goes around
usually comes back angry.
All that glitters
has a nondisclosure agreement.

Hope springs eternal,
in the marketing department.

(ACT ONE: DRAFT)

STAGE DIRECTIONS
Basement.
Dim bulb swaying.

Center stage:
A battered leather wooden chest,
straps and buckles cinched
like a ship at storm.

Upstairs: (Built out upper stage)
A woman, white hair in soft pins,
her chair angled toward a radio
hissing static and old jazz.

She eats quietly.
Spoon tracing circles in her bowl.

CHARACTER NOTES

THE WOMAN – seventy-eight
hands like river stones,
her face a map of soft summers
and lonely winters.

THE CHEST –

Unseen:
heavy with letters, photographs,
perfumed silk,
a man’s pressed shirts,
and the ache of two bodies
that once loved
without mercy.

Seen:
Its sides swell -
the subtle shape of a man’s hands
behind it's leather,
pressing out,
clasping the straps.
Fingers circle
the locked buckles.

THE PAST LOVER – Voice only.
He exists as vibration
inside surrounding wood,
breathing
in response to the Woman.

SCENE PROGRESSION

Lights fade up.
The chest breathes.

Pause.

Buckles flex.
A groan,
like an old stair.

She glances down
through the floorboards.
She does not rise.

(radio goes silent)

Eyes closed,
she whispers:
HUSH NOW.
I REMEMBER YOU.
I REMEMBER.

And then
nothing.

Her silence
is part of the score.

ACTION CUE

The chest swells.
Wood stretching.

A strap snaps.

A letter flutters
up the stairs,
as if seeking oxygen
and lands
at her feet.

She rises.
Fetches rope, duct tape,
an old belt.

Descends the stairs.

Ties the memory down again.

Her hands shake,
but she is precise,
as if dressing a wound.

She ascends.
Sits back in her chair.
Spoon in hand.
Mid‑air.

Radio on:
a soft trumpet solo,
weary with promise.

The chest downstairs
begins to thump
and inhale.

A low whisper
seeps through the floorboards:
her name.

Her hands tremble.
She does not answer.

The chest exhales once,
long, hollow,
full throated,

and the house answers.

FADE TO BLACK

Only the sound
of her spoon
falling
to the floor.

~ A Nursery Rhyme ~

By night the lamplights bloom in blue,
and Squinty Bat comes lurking through.
A flicker, a whisper,
a crooked spin,
she twirls in the hush where dreams begin.

She nibbles moths that orbit the glow,
grim as the gossip graveyards know.
Around the lamp
she loops and slides,
a velvet ribbon on moonlit tides.

At morning sun - dreadful, bright! -
Miss Clara Parrot claims the light.
She squawks and scolds,
so green, so loud,
a herald of day to the mortal crowd.

She tattles from trees with her feathered choir,
spilling the secrets that night conspired.
Their laughter clatters
like shattered glass,
naming each sin the shadows let pass.

Neighbors groan and pull their sheets
as Clara reigns over waking streets.
While Squinty swings
in her secret nook,
dangling like crime in a dusty book.

By day, it’s Clara, gossip and glare,  
by night, it’s Squinty, a ghost in the air.  
And before you ask:
Which one is blessed?
the sun and the moon will refuse that test.

It’s never easy
starting midstream,
when your joints squeak like old vinyl.

Worse to end just as you begin,
editing hope into bullet points,
buffing your portfolio like a coffin lid.
You kneel to metadata while the holy algorithm decides
if you're human enough to be blessed.

Better to read old Nabokov,
nap in your robe
(the good one with pockets),
wait for the mail like it’s 1998
when catalogs still mattered.
Let purpose dissolve, like the vitamin
you dropped in the sink.

You failed to fail,
which sounds noble
but feels more like
accidentally surviving.

So drift toward the grocery by the newsstand,
nod to the pretty barista with the knife-edge bangs,
pretend the papayas mean something.

You’re the median of middle-aged.
Your knees, both traitors.
Your dreams, reruns.

These lines limp
like your fifth attempt
to rebrand the layoff as a sabbatical.
Don’t derail, just project
your better self on a screen.
Crop the hair, dim the lighting,
hide the existential dread
behind a well-placed emoji.

Let rhyme stutter
like a pull-string toy,
half-broken,
slightly too cheerful.
Feet unsure, eyes fogged
(by pollen, by memory, by news).

There’s no noir here,
no brooding detective,
no dame worth lighting a cigarette for.

Just this:
the echo of effort,
forms half-filled,
where even your name looks uncertain.

So let’s call it.
Let’s bury the draft,
archive the ambition,
delete the app.

End
where we never really
began.

Play it slow-
not for romance,
but because the strings are blistered,
and every note splits the sky
with fire.

Stroll through the panic,
it’s routine:
duct tape on the windows,
radio on low,
a list of missing birds
tacked to the wall
like fallen saints.

You said you'd carry me,
but the world’s gone grey,
and the olive tree’s
just smoke now.

There’s no audience left.
Just wind
and its thousand-watt warning.

Still, your spine curves to the rhythm
like a fever dream from Babylon,
hips like warning sirens,
ankles sunk in ash.

I want to understand
what we ruined,
but only at a pace I can stand,
only with eyes closed.

There was a time
we dressed like lovers.
Now it’s mylar blankets
and filtered masks.

We knew the promise;
we broke it anyway,
above it,
beneath it,
inside it.

Someone keeps whispering
about children,
as if hope still blooms
in poisoned soil.

Play it slow,
with bare hands if you must.
But don’t pretend this isn’t a requiem.
Don’t dress it up in velvet or vows.
Just let the music float
and burn,
like everything else.

Your demons don’t play well with mine,
They bite and they bruise and entwine.
Yours weaponize tears,
Mine whisper, come near.
The chaos is purely divine.

Yours gasp for the rush of cool air,
Mine drown in your scent, flesh, and stare.
Yours vanish like shame;
Mine burn all the same,
Still lit by the hunger we bear.

We drift toward escape, dark and slow,
They bloom with our secrets and grow.
Yours pull at my seams;
Mine knot in your dreams.
A dance only demons could know.

“perhaps the sun is a teacup, spilled by a girl in a skyhouse who laughs in polka dots–”

You wrote like someone
who had been listening
long before speaking,
each poem a hush,
each repost a gentle offering.

This space once held you,
your words, your calm curation,
a gentle steadiness
in a shifting field of voices.

take this small goodbye
not as an end,
but as a door left open,
just in case
you return with your light.

Until then,
may strength find you
in soft moments,
and peace arrive
never needing to be earned.