We, the roses

A Stage Play by Rylan_l

A ten minute stage play; a little abstract. Still a work in progress :)

We, the Roses
Act 1: Scene 1
Play opens on a blank stage. There are three women sitting on the stage in a line, and they all look alike (are meant to be the same woman). SWEETIE sits farthest left in a simple white dress with her hair in an updo, holding a mirror and staring at herself in it. HONEY is in the middle, clothed in only a white bedsheet, with hair that’s somewhat frazzled and messy, and her makeup is a little smeared. ANNA, farthest right, is in street clothes, and her hair and makeup are normal. Upon the lights opening on the stage, all of the women begin talking at the same time.

ANNA (repeated over and over, at the same time with others) This is how I end?
HONEY (repeated over and over, at the same time with others) I am his.
SWEETIE (repeated over and over, at the same time with others) He said I looked pretty today.
SWEETIE, ANNA, HONEY (in unison) Shhhhhhh
HONEY (with eyes closed) Hush, hush, he says. His fingers dance on my cheek. His lips softly press against mine. Hush, hush; slowly waking. (eyes open) My eyes part and I am alone. No lips, no fingers...no him. The hot sun beats in through the window on the white sheets...on me. The bed feels so tangibly empty, as if the distinct nothing that was there was actually something. (begins messing with bed sheets)
SWEETIE The sun is my favorite. It lights me up, makes me feel alive. It warms me from the inside out, calms me, makes me happy. Oh, I love the sun! (pauses, looking into her mirror) He says the sun makes my hair glow and my eyes shimmer. He’s the one that says the sun lights me up.
HONEY Said, you fool! He said that, but he does not say it now.
SWEETIE Stop! You’re just jealous because he never sees you in the sun, and the moon surely can’t do what the sun can. Look at you! A tattered mess in those bedsheets.
ANNA, hugs her knees to her chest, and lays her head on her knees. Both HONEY and SWEETIE pause and look to ANNA.
HONEY (still looking at ANNA) Shhhhhh. Hush, hush, Sweetie.
All three women bow their heads together.
HONEY (looking up) The silence is
HONEY, SWEETIE, ANNA (in unison) my
HONEY crutch. It is the means which allows me to hobble through the minefield of our house. Bombs of broken pictures, haunting smiles, waiting for me wherever I go. So I wrap the silence around me, use it to pretend that I can feel the way the pictures say. Often, I find he prefers the silence, too. In fact, I’m pretty sure our home is an aquarium; us two swimming in the tangible silence.
A man in a suit walks across the back of the stage, evenly paced.
SWEETIE He is just tired, Honey (she briefly looks up from her mirror). He works so we can be happy, he works so you don’t have to be the way you are. And doesn’t the silence make it more incredible? He doesn’t even have to say it, it just comes with him, like a dog, and wraps itself around me. Love.
ANNA (looking off at nothing, absentmindedly) As if the distinct nothing that was there was actually something…
SWEETIE Why are you so blind? So cynical?!? Love is life: it evolves and changes forms. Why do you expect this love to be the same as in the Before? It must evolve or we would crumble. But, because it has evolved, we still love one another. Surely, you must feel it.
HONEY Feel what? That his eyes don’t watch me, his hands don’t touch me? (sarcastically) Yes, I feel this love, Sweetie. Jesus, what’s wrong with you?
SWEETIE What’s wrong with me? I love him, that’s my problem! No, my problem is I love him and he loves me.
HONEY Really, Sweetie? And is it that magic mirror of yours that lets you live in a different reality?
SWEETIE No more magic in this mirror then there is in those sheets.
HONEY looks down at the bed sheet she’s wrapped in. SWEETIE continues looking at her reflection. ANNA looks up and over at them. All three women sigh in unison.
SWEETIE Do you remember the Before, Honey?
HONEY closes her eyes and begins to sway slightly.
HONEY (opening her eyes) August, hot dry and muggy. It was the fifteenth?
ANNA nods.
SWEETIE He was like a salmon swimming upstream, so distinct amid the ordered chaos of everyone else’s busy life.
SWEETIE and ANNA begin to mimic HONEY’s swaying.
HONEY It was so still, though.
HONEY, SWEETIE, and ANNA all stop.
SWEETIE His eyes paralyzed me, I swear. The ice blue lance pierced me to the core.
HONEY Stop it!
ANNA shakes.
HONEY His eyes are so dull now.
SWEETIE Or your glasses are foggy.
HONEY I wish I had that mirror. (pauses) Cold nights and dull razors that cut without cutting.
SWEETIE I was thinking of cutting my hair. Do you think he’d like a shoulder-length hair on me; it’s always been so long? Maybe my face’d look fat.
HONEY (exacerbated)Why don’t you ask him?
SWEETIE I want to surprise him, though!
HONEY You think he’ll really care all that much? It’s not that he notices us all that often (chuckles).
SWEETIE whips around and glares at HONEY.
SWEETIE He said I looked pretty today! Of course he notices us. I mean, he loves me, how could he not care about what I do?
HONEY, SWEETIE, ANNA How could he?
SWEETIE puts down the mirror and pulls her knees to her chest, matching ANNA’s pose. She looks at HONEY and ANNA, then away the other direction.
SWEETIE He said I looked pretty today. (smiles sheepishly). I...I hadn’t done much different with my makeup, not even tried a new lipstick color. But he said I looked pretty today. I am pretty today. (pauses) It reminded me of the Before. When we first met, he said there was not a woman on this Earth who he could ever find more gorgeous than me. He also promised to love me till the very last of my days...that there was not a woman on this Earth he could ever love more than he loved me. I wrote it down, played it in my head like music so I’d never forget. The Before was the sweetest, like honey or warm rain. Not that now is much different. He just loves me differently, it’s like that sweet embedded in dark chocolate. I mean, he said I looked pretty today. So what if he doesn’t say it all the time? I’m not some needy, lost, desperate girl who needs constant reassurance. This is real love: knowing it because it’s a part of you not because it comes in sound. He doesn’t have to say it at all, really; he said I looked pretty today. That’s how he says “I love you”. He said he loved me today.
HONEY brings her knees to her chest, matching ANNA and SWEETIE. All three women take a strand of their hair and begin messing with it.
HONEY, SWEETIE, ANNA He said he loved me today?
SWEETIE Oh! What about the roses? (picks up mirror from ground and relaxes her legs) Yes, there it is: in the roses!
HONEY Don’t bring up the roses, Sweetie.
SWEETIE Why not? (preoccupied with reflection) Oh, it was a sweet, sweet day! I love the smell of roses.
HONEY The roses? Really, the goddamn roses are what you want to think about? (mockingly) The roses, the roses, oh, how sweet such things do smell. (pauses and shakes head) You’re pathetic.
SWEETIE How? Is it wrong to be happy when you receive gifts? He showed up at the door, with a smile and a kiss. And the three roses: soft and velvety, lusciously red, and smelling like they had come straight from a meadow. He said he loved me, handed me the roses, and kissed me. He said he loved me! So, I put them in a clear vase in the middle of the table where I could watch them all day be painted by the warm sun sifting in through the windows.
HONEY Where I could watch them wilt. See, they’d had their roots to the Earth ripped from them, so they could be a manicured and used to solve other’s problems. I watched them wilt.
SWEETIE (timidly) Well, nothing can last forever, right? They were beautiful while they lasted and then
SWEETIE, ANNA, HONEY (in unison) We wilt.
ANNA looks to SWEETIE and HONEY. SWEETIE sets the mirror on her legs, tiredly. HONEY sighs.
HONEY The night has become so cold, the bed so empty. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t speak to me, just turns out the light.
Lights go out on stage.
HONEY I almost prefer the nights when he is gone. Those are the nights I can look at his side of the bed and know it feels empty because he isn’t there, not because he is. I never knew prison bars could feel so soft. When I married him, I swore that I could never imagine a world where I awoke and knew I was not his and he was not mine to love.
Lights come back on.
HONEY I think I have ended up a liar…
After he gave those roses to me, he was gone several nights that week. He gave no explanation of where or why and didn't seem to think I'd expect one. I think it hurts more that when I looked into his eyes afterwards, rather than there being worry or guilt or anxiousness, there was nothing. As if everything was normal, as though I was just another person in a room. This is when I came to realize the reality I was in, the lie I had ended up telling. Because as long as I love him I will be chained to this ring, shackled to this bed; as long as I love him I will be his but he will never be mine.
HONEY hugs herself and looks ahead, emotionless. SWEETIE looks over to her and begins to quietly cry, then turns and looks at her face in the mirror. ANNA also looks over at HONEY and then quickly looks away. SWEETIE looks over to ANNA. Then, SWEETIE and HONEY stand, looking at each other. SWEETIE and HONEY turn to face audience again, and begin to sway.
ANNA I think that there are certain people that come into our lives, or sometimes just one single person, who we love from the minute we know them. And I don't mean know as in some deep sense of knowledge about someone's ins and outs, I mean literally that very initial moment you see them. Maybe, quite often, you don't know it at that first instant, but once you realize you love them, you realize you've loved them since that very first moment. At least, that's the way it was for me with him. I loved him since the moment I saw him that first day, I loved him it like it was embedded in my bones, my soul. Once I figured out I loved him, I knew it was like it was a disease. He was my disease, and my cure. I knew it with every fiber of my being, as though, somehow, it had been planned that I'd see him that day, planned that I'd meet him, and planned that I'd love him. I've never been sure of much in my life, but this I'm sure of. Thank god, that that I know, no matter how terrifying such certainty is, I was meant to love that man from before we even met...but, can that love end? (pauses)
SWEETIE screams mutely, raking her fingers through her hair. HONEY begins to breathe more quickly, though, again, mute, as she anxiously rubs her arms. ANNA stands.
ANNA I suppose...I mean, I know we are all finite, that quite frankly not a single thing is infinite. I know we are destined to begin and doomed to end, that in the great vastitude of the cosmic universe each of our lives is only a bright flash of wild energy.
The lights flash bright. Then, roses begin to fall onto the stage, half wilted and half alive. ANNA, SWEETIE, and HONEY all begin walking backwards at different angles, until they are walking in their own own circles, backwards.
ANNA But can it be so goddamn finite?
ANNA stops walking, now in the center of both SWEETIE and HONEY’s circles.
ANNA How can something so profoundly fated to begin, so powerful, just dissipate? Just slowly unravel itself till it is only a thread drifting off into the intangible space we all go? Can I not love him?
The man walks across the back of the stage, evenly paced. ANNA turns and watches him walk away.
ANNA This is how I end, isn't it? Slowly being pulled apart by half that loves him and half that doesn’t? Two, now, then it’ll be five, then ten!
SWEETIE stops walking backward and grabs ANNA’s arm. SWEETIE puts a fresh rose in her hand, then steps back and looks at her.
ANNA My arms slowly yanked out of their sockets,
HONEY also grabs her arm, and in ANNA's hand she places a wilted rose before stepping back and looking back at her.
ANNA my torso stretched longer and longer,
ANNA stands with both arms outstretched, each hand holding a rose.
ANNA ...as I, myself, disperse; I dissipate. Half that loves him,
SWEETIE suddenly whips her arms out like ANNA’s, but she also flings her her back back.
ANNA half that cannot.
HONEY suddenly whips her arms out and assumes the position SWEETIE is in.
ANNA This is how I end?!? This is what love does? Dooms me to die piece by piece,
HONEY drops to the floor. Then, SWEETIE drops to the floor, as well.
ANNA ...each part of me atrophying and decaying,
SWEETIE and HONEY curl into balls on the floor. ANNA slowly sinks to her knees.
ANNA because I am diseased no longer with a cure? He doesn't love me.
ANNA, SWEETIE, and HONEY all begin to cry. Lights fade out.