Sitting next to a playwright during a production of one of her early works.

An early work of a poet’s. Ed knocked over a can at the beginning of the second act, but the playwright seemed more annoyed with the crinkle of someone’s snack behind us and also the play. My opinions are: wow, something about heavy hands, the words too pretty and too the same for each, near twee, but so very lovely and clever, a meander and then a sprint to a place that didn’t quite need a sprint. A poet’s play if the poet didn’t have workshops, was writing about this place but not the place it’s actually about and refused to see it, to hear anything of it even (there was supposed to be a q and a, the selling point for my attendance that night but a changed mind by the playwright). The play’s motifs kept repeating itself (readers are smart, come on now) and this, coming from me, the one who loves run-on sentences and repetition and objects, but I think there is a line and sometimes that line can’t be seen by the person pushing forward. I enjoyed it! I think it was well done, overall, but I want to read this thing because the more I think about it, the more I dislike it, the actual words, I mean. “Irresonsponsibly hopeful” is the worst phrase to have a play aspire to be. Isn’t all hope irresponsible in some way, small or large, depending?

I wonder if I will always be jealous of poets-turned-playwrights, of my friends, of my acquaintances. I wonder if jealousy is the thing I need to shove me because not caring seems like a luxury that will keep me still. What if I am still but jealous.

One couple stood up and hugged for a few minutes and the couple on the other side of us were touching in a way that my prudish heart felt was inappropriate for intermission or really any place at all except maybe at a bar, some drinks in, and even then, I don’t know about that. A person in front would occasionally laugh and say, “What!” The play was very funny and dark and smart, etc.

I didn’t say anything to the playwright. I sat next to her and then I didn’t sit next to her. She talked shortly with a few people and left promptly once she reached the vestibule.