I Would Write

I am always excited by enabling constraints and find that I come up with things I would never have discovered unless I was prompted to do so.  In that vain, here is a second script I wrote for the English National Opera Mini-Operas contest.
This script is meant to be a duet in letters between a Man and a Woman.  It is inspired by a story seed by A.L. Kennedy.

I Would Write

MAN
If I could write to
you of everything I would,
list all of the small thrills
(years from now they will be even moreso)
of someone else in my arms, no,
in front of me, where I can drink
for my memory.
I would show you that the
water is only shin-deep and
impossible to drown in, that
we could probably swim for
ages in front of others without
encountering a shred of shame
and from the shore we would
just be having a splash.
I would draw in fine detail
the stairway behind the bar,
the almost closed bathroom door
through which I glimpsed the
finery of another.  These and the
heat in my room from
the vent in the floor–my
mattress positioned just so
and our feet every morning cooked.

MAN and WOMAN
I would write to you if I could

WOMAN
For several hours, I’ve waited.
Waited among menacing chairs, one
of which I haven’t moved for at
least a week–the shadows even
on dark days essential to
the gravity of the room.
I heard the sink in the
window and others voices from
the corner where there is
no one.  When you were here
last, we padded from room to
room in ghostly quiet.  Everything,
you said, was how it appeared
to you in dreams–something that
scared me since it is
all too real for me.
The tower bells ring every hour.
Caruso rattles from the back courtyard.
I can only wait for you.
If I could, I would write.