(single light on the speaker. The tone is soft, searching. They speak as if to someone who may or may not be listening.)

SPEAKER:

(quietly)

Oh, my heart breaks again,

for no reason.

Like a tide that returns without season.

No moon to beckon.

No wind to explain.

Just the soft ache that falls like rain.

(pause)

It starts with a sudden soft aching,

and it aches more.

I tried to conceal it.

But it breaks.

(small voice)

It did break.

(looks up)

And I felt it.

Wherever I am now, beyond or in time,

beneath yesterday’s dreams.

I felt the tremble in your ribs,

the way you held your own chest

like maybe, just maybe,

it would hold the pain in place.

(beat)

I am the name you never learned.

The hand that never reached you.

I’m the almost.

The soul written into your silence.

(steps forward, slow)

Is this the life I chose?

The wrong path,

where every turn bent away from you?

Every mile took me farther

from the voice I’ve never heard

but somehow mourn?

Did I miss you,

not once,

but over lifetimes?

I walk roads lined with almosts.

My fingers brush

the hem of a presence

that turns

before I can say.

(softly)

It was always you.

It was always you.

The echo in songs I never understood

until the sorrow made sense.

The stranger in dreams

whose face blurred,

but whose absence, I felt.

I searched in moments.

Late-night streetlights.

Hands I held too long

hoping they’d turn into yours.

you were the warmth that never arrived.

The letter never written

but always read.

(long pause)

And now I wonder,

is fate just a beautifully wrapped mistake?

A trick of timing?

A cruel rhythm where our hearts

beat in perfect sync

but always in separate rooms?

(stares into distance)

Still,

I leave my windows open.

My silence wide.

Just in case your soul

drifts close

on some invisible wind.

Do I keep waiting?

Or do I run?

why was my heart made for you

if you were never mine?

Why does it burden

my little life.

this quiet, breakable life,

every time I imagine you

in some little house by the sea,

opening a book,

finding me

in the ache between the lines.

(beat)

Do you think I’ve gone mad completely?

(soft smile)

No.

Not mad.

I’m just feeling a feeling.

Take my words for me.

So I don’t say another.

Take my soul.

To anywhere,

anywhere in the universe

where you are

and I am

at last.

What is love

if it’s only fog,

unbearable to walk through.

and I don’t even get

a glimpse of you?

Not your hand

on a window frame,

not your voice

in the spine of a book,

not your breath

in the wind.

Then what do I do

with this heart

that folds itself

each night

like it’s preparing to be held

by someone

who isn’t coming?

(whispers)

Let me dissolve.

Not in grief,

but in the soft knowing

that somewhere,

in another version of this life,

you reached me.

You knocked once,

and I opened.

We said nothing.

We just knew.

(silence)

And maybe, that’s all love ever was.

Not the meeting.

Not the kiss.

Not the keeping.

But the recognition,

that I was always written

in your favorite lines.

And you,

in mine.

(Lights dim.)