turnaround

I dreamed I was on the final page
of a screenplay unsold, as yet,
unmade, and with no guarantee
any deal would be struck
- let alone find its cast,
or shoot,
or come to its final cut,
or ever be screened.
It felt like the end
before a beginning
had even been made.
Like an alternate life -
not real, not art
- just something supposed
to become something great,
if we found the support.

It's become too late.
We can look up and see that, now.
We put pure, beating heart
into this mistake.
No act left to play.
Our read-through winds down,
and you stand.

For your part: you await the line

that perfect one line that the world would quote
to express all this wrenching and glorious hurt,
in the moment of terror, with all at stake -
the joy of a life made real
in a play of one act,
that only we two can make.
That only we two
ever need to believe,
and feel,
and you wait.

For your part: you wait.

And the pause draws out,
and your eyes say it all -
all you're willing to hear,
all that needs to be said above all,
one time, in that perfect one line

which was left off my script.

I will fumble my part as well
as I can. I won't cry over it, and if
you laugh

- I will certainly understand.
Maybe this
was a comedy, after all. And my part
- the role of a perfect life - neither real,
nor art, but a perfect life. Or at least,
half