Curtains up. Lights on. You’re the playwrite, dear, not me. Is this how it goes?

This room is bright and summery. Honey light leaks in through the windows. I sit at the dining table, the polished mahogany surface we bought three years ago in the flea market behind the run-down Chinese restaurant where we met. Do you remember that day?

Oh, my dear. How things have changed between us.

I do not speak while you tell me what you have prepared to say. I can tell you have prepared it because you do not have your usual pauses, the split-second moments of recollection where you consider yourself before continuing. Today, you say it all without a single break, though only to breathe. You have planned when to breathe between words. I can tell.

You, my dear, you were an actor before you wrote anything down. Before you were turned away one too many times, told you were not meant for the stage. I have always seen the performer within you. Even now, your words are rehearsed.

This, I think to myself, could be a play. That is how I will keep myself together while you list the reasons to me. We are being watched, and this is simply a fiction.

Maybe there is an audience of observers behind me, just out of view. They are silent breathers, silent absorbers of the story we bring to life before them. I cannot turn to look at them, though, because my eyes are fixated on you.

Was this how it felt, dear, to be on the stage? Torn open in front of hundreds of eyes? I have heard that in the very rare tragedy, an actor has died during a production. Perhaps this is where I will end up, too. Gruesome, lovely, my innards spilt across the curtains from the knife disguised in your words.

It turns out I do not have any lines in our play, dear. Even as you turn to leave, I have nothing to say. Perhaps I had lines, in the original script. But I have forgotten them now. Stage fright, I suppose.

It’s fine. You carry on without me.

The play is reaching the climax now. You are getting angry, though I still haven’t said a word. And then you leave to go.

This is my last chance. Our audience will be on the edge of their seats.

‘Speak’, they will urge me. ‘Say something, you helpless coward. You are being left behind!’

You close the door behind you as you go. A breeze drifts in the open window, chilled and reminiscent of the sea. Now, I suppose I am to leave the stage. Or perhaps I am meant to run after you, tell you to stay.

Oh, but dear, I am not the playwrite. I do not know how to end this scene by myself.

Curtains closed. Lights down.

Somewhere behind me, our audience breaks into applause. Do I smile? Do I give them a bow for the part I have played?

I think of you, of all you wanted, none of which ever included me. What lies behind me; that is where I find your prosperity. Where your heart will stay once our show is closed and the theater is abandoned. It will not be my hands you place your heart in, but the hands of those cheering behind me, the roses tossed your way.

Dear, you finally got your standing ovation.

Fin.