SWEATER!
The lights come back up and the audience roars. I take a deep breath and wipe tears from my eyes. I’m mesmerized by her ability to hypnotize an entire audience with such powerfully portrayed words. Just words. I’m immediately addicted and want to hear more. Will puts his arm around my shoulders and leans back into the seat with me, bringing me back to reality.
“Well?” he says.
I accept his embrace and move my head to his shoulder as we both stare out over the crowd. He rests his chin on top of my head.
“That was unbelievable,” I whisper. His hand touches the side of my face, and he brushes his lips against my forehead. I close my eyes and wonder how much more my emotions can be tested. Three days ago, I was devastated, bitter, hopeless. Today I woke up feeling happy for the
rst time in months. I feel vulnerable. I try to mask my emotions, but I
feel like everyone knows what I’m thinking and feeling, and I don’t like it. I don’t like being an open book. I feel like I’m up on the stage, pouring my heart out to him, and it scares the hell out of me.
We sit in the same embrace as several more people perform their pieces. The poetry is as vast and electrifying as the audience. I have never laughed and cried so much. The way these poets are able to lure you into a whole new world, viewing things from a vantage point you’ve never seen before. Making you feel like you are the mother who lost her baby, or the boy who killed his father, or even the man who got high for the rst time and ate ve plates of bacon. I feel a connection with these poets and their stories. What’s more, I feel a deeper connection to Will. I can’t imagine that he’s brave enough to get up on the stage and bare his soul like these people are doing. I have to see it. I have to see him do this.
The emcee makes one last appeal for performers.
I turn toward him. “Will, you can’t bring me here and not perform. Please do one? Please, please, please?”
He leans his head back against the booth. “You’re killing me, Lake. Like I said, I don’t really have anything new.”
“Do something old then,” I suggest. “Or do all these people make you nervous?”
He tilts his head toward me and smiles. “Not all of them. Just one of them.”
I suddenly have the urge to kiss him. I suppress the urge for now, and continue to plead. I clasp my hands together under my chin. “Don’t make me beg,” I say.
“You already are!” He pauses for a few seconds, then removes his arm from around my shoulders and leans forward. “All right, all right,” he says. He grins at me as he reaches into his pocket. “But I’m warning you, you asked.”
He pulls his wallet out just as the emcee announces the start of round two. Will stands up, holding his three dollars in the air. “I’m in!”
The emcee shields his eyes with his hand, squinting into the audience to see who spoke up. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s one of our very own, Mr. Will Cooper. So nice of you to nally join us,” he teases into the microphone.
Will makes his way through the crowd and walks onto the stage and into the spotlight.
“What’s the name of your piece tonight, Will?” the emcee asks.
“ ‘Death,’ ” Will replies, looking past the crowd and directly at me. The smile fades from his eyes and he begins his performance.
Death . The only thing inevitable in life.
People don’t like to talk about death because
it makes them sad.
They don’t want to imagine how life will go on
without them,
all the people they love will brie y grieve
but continue to breathe.
They don’t want to imagine how life will go on
without them,
Their children will still grow
Get married
Get old. . .
They don’t want to imagine how life will continue to
go on without them,
Their material things will be sold
Their medical les stamped “closed”
Their name becoming a memory to everyone they
know.
They don’t want to imagine how life will go on
without them, so instead of accepting it head on, they
avoid the subject altogether,
hoping and praying it will somehow. . .
pass them by.
Forget about them,
moving on to the next one in line.
No, they didn’t want to imagine how life would
continue to go on . . .
without them.
But death
didn’t
forget.
Instead they were met head-on by death,
disguised as an 18-wheeler
behind a cloud of fog.
No.
Death didn’t forget about them.
If only they had been prepared, accepted the
inevitable, laid out their plans, understood that it
wasn’t just their lives at hand.