virtual performance with live reading, shared-screen video, and separate audio
i
A door, it’s open three fourths of the way but you say it like three quarters. Cheap, reddish glazed wood but the shine is dull and yellowed. Observe the wood, tell me what you see. Rusted metal, a keyhole, a crystal handle. The sun is setting on the door frame.
ii
Beyond are stairs, a landing, a glow from a window without blinds — branches tap the window’s glass. Outside no more than 11 feet, 132 inches away — but you think of it in feet — is another home. From the door, only the cream paneling is visible. Do you see?
iii
What is it about the window? You are inside…inside of what? She says you’re inside your home but fails to hear you, the you she doesn’t see. What doesn’t she see about you, what doesn’t she see?
iv
Behind where you sit, streaking yellow tints the walls, the floor, the doors. The furniture and wine bottles. You’re freezing but she says to keep the window open, a screen now the only thing between you and where the yellow tint comes from.
v
You turn around to these double windows, now all she can see is you. There. Peering through a red wine, you’re looking past her at the house across the street. A smile dawns on your face and she’s no longer there. You are pushed outside with your sight and only your sight. The room around you follows suit, vanishing, blurring your peripherals. There is nothing but the house across the street one hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet away.
vi
Step towards her…what do you see? She’s frail, distant, a shadow. What do you have to say for yourself? Look through the pill bottle and see her again. Here. She’s right here. But the closer you look the farther out she seems. As the sun is set, your sight averts to the window in the kitchen, out to the porch.
vii
Your heart quickens at a burst of light from the porch. You run to the window to hear the clouds. What do you think they’re saying to each other? [She says] it’s just thunder and you’ve been inside for too long, but you know they have something for you. Wait for another flash of light before you try to find her eyes again, but no matter how hard you look, she silhouettes. What are you missing?
viii
The outside is drowning, stay with it, you. Stay here, find her so you can see each other. What are you trying to tell her?
ix
Another flash and you hear something fall. Quick to the landing, to the open window with tapping branches and a home 11 feet away. She’s standing behind you. You told her to close the window and now you’re picking up shards from a mirror you knew would shatter. Look closer at the shard in your hand. Grip it tighter until drops of crimson stream across your reflection. But where is she? You turn around to see her and another flash reveals her soft silhouette. Try to see her again and she’s lost in the landing’s darkness. Reach out to her when the sky flashes again, you want to pull her closer and ask her who she is, but you already know the answer.
x
Thunder and you can’t touch her, grab her. She is your shadow, a blanketed projection of yourself, lighted by what you can’t reach outside, what melts into your home, your walls, without care. Glimpses of yourself and only your mind is what you hear, you are alone. One body, let your thoughts speak for themselves, let your actions and movements be your language. The last long flash illuminates the double windows across the way and she asks you again, what is it about the window? What is it about the window?
xi
Did you forget it was feet not inches and quarters not fourths?
