The curtains fall

Remaining: a stunned crowd

 

(that are all the same person)

 

One of them stands and claps and claps

The rest shun her with cold glares

 

And she stands on her seat

 

Before starting again

 

Her claps don’t pierce the silence

As much as the silence pierces her claps

And she claps for the year they all had

 

(And the rest stay silent for the same reason)

 

They are silent for the world and the pain

and the broken people stumbling to survive

 

She claps for world and its glow

And the beauty inside of us that we choke on everyday

 

They are silent for hate that divides us

The shattered security we’ve come to expect

The festering puddles of what we thought we’d defeated

 

But she claps for love

The gut-wrenching enormity of it

The defiant unity and the brilliance

 

They are silent because they have lost their softness

We are shoved and kicked away and cast aside

As ashes from wretched flames we can’t escape

 

And she claps for the strength of the minority

Rising and falling with steady grace

Flickering heroes carrying worlds, they don’t waver

 

And the claps don’t defeat the silence

It hangs like fog, but fiercer

 

Yet she, alone, claps

no one and everyone expected her

She was lost long ago amidst the winds

And now the winds envy her, she is louder

 

(more desperate)

 

And everyone gets up to leave

Still she claps and whoops

 

And gradually

 

They all find the strength

To sit back down

And the play

begins

again