for the makers

what would you name it
if you could bottle up this feeling
bottle & sell it.
for all the lonely hearts.
what would you call it?

i have few words to describe. perhaps facts will suffice.

3 friends, 4 coffees, one of them with oat milk.
a bedroom, a living room, a black box, a coffee shop.
linear (barely). present day.

4 acts, 82 pages, several re-writes.
4 actors. then 2. then 1. then 4 again.
a fearless director.
a brilliant playwright.
coffee. and again, coffee.

3 friends, several dead brain cells, one common goal.

5 insurance companies, countless frustrated phone calls, clumps of hair.
("but like, what does general liability MEAN exactly?")

7 days, 57 hours, too much caffeine, several carrot sticks.
1 U-Haul, no freight elevator, a brave, brave driver.
a genius lighting designer, 23 chairs, a few questionable seating arrangements --
and re-arrangements

3 friends. 2 freak outs. countless moments of reassurance.

2 tables, 1 futon, a dozen Schmakery's cookies, many (unsalted) pretzels - an empty living room.
4 idiots,  several dance parties, 1 throat gurgle, too many laugh attacks (sorry, LB).
a black box, a subway station, a jazz bar, a bodega.
non linear, present day, summer.

3 friends, zero clues, a hundred angels.

i guess this feeling, if i had to describe it,
is one of pride, of humility, of gratitude.
of belonging.
these people (fiction and nonfiction), this story, these moments.
this chance to feel. to trust. to leap.

and so, maybe we really are made up of all that surrounds us. but if we let it all go, we're not erased. we're not nothing. rather, it's the feeling that remains. the presence that holds up. that sticks. the truth of it. the light. so we can never fade away. not really.