Monologue Madness

Dear Edison, At the center of a light bulb Is the twist of an idea And next to the idea Is the person in the other room Gathering up her thoughts She finds herself Listening to invention But through a wall Or past a door Or beyond her own understanding Not because she isn’t bright But because she’s married to a genius A genius who doesn’t pick up his socks Or remember to let the dog out In the morning She’s called ‘beleaguered’ by friends But she feels all right The mornings are mostly empty But the afternoons have sound And the evenings Still have a touch of the physical Wine fills up just so much Of certain glasses Left around the kitchen And the garbage looks like It could spark a fire At any moment Other than these small breakdowns She feels good about her life And the man she loves The man in the other room Her pockets have notes in them And the notes tell stories About how this day was Or that ...

Dear Joe, Today I’d like to introduce you To the woman you’re about to marry Oh, don’t worry The woman is me But the woman is also Standing a world away from you In a place You’ll never get to No matter how badly You’d like to see it I don’t know that woman’s name But she’s been with me For as long As I can remember Stuck to the bottom Of who I was Trying to get me To pay attention To her But anytime I looked over at her She’d turn her back on me And let go on wondering About who it was On the other side of me Joe, did you know You were marrying a poet? I didn’t either Until now People tell you That the dangerous thing About marriage Is that the people you love Change And that you change And that one day You wind up Two different people Who can’t love each other Anymore But the truth is I don’t even know who I am now So if I change I probably won’t even know it I just hope I ch...

Dear Blorta, On this, your Day of Wed We excitedly welcome your new life-man Flerg Into our happy family We know you received much sadness When your previous life-man Was savagely attacked By Little-Hands-Big-Teeth And we wept alongside you For many days and nights Wondering why the Fire Gods Take and take and take from us Their Tiny Rock People When Spoot was eaten We told you that life would go on But to speak with truth We did not believe this to be so Life is so short Our eldest tribeswoman, Gerta Is just thirty-seven And she’s only made it this far Because she refuses To leave her cave Also, no one has seen her In many years So it is very possible She is dead Most of us never make it to one Day of Wed Let alone two So as Little-Hands-Big-Teeth was picking clean Every last bone of Spoot We thought— Well, Blorta’s definitely going to die alone And we knew that because tribal law dictates That any widow wh...

Dear Agatha, First Woman of the Cosmos When the sun was created You stepped inside of it And became a woman I remember feeling very proud And at the same time, concerned That you would burn up Within its fiery center But you stepped out again And laughed Diving into a pool of darkness That had formed Around the orbit Of a planet The size of six Jupiter’s This was before we invented science Or physics Or geography Or creation You were before creation And you created Yourself And in doing so You invented your own Birth So that was unusual Agatha, your eyes Were made of time Until time needed to be given To those who didn’t have enough of it And from then on They were stars Just like the sun And that was when you would look at us And ask us questions About yourself Great minds have been trying to comprehend the Universe For nearly as long as it has existed And you, a child of the Universe Are no...

Dear Evelyn the Bold, Greetings from us The people who will attempt to murder you Now that you have taken over for your father Boris the Punctual As we write this You’re on your way To a royal wedding We understand that your new husband Frederick the Frequently Asleep Isn’t thrilled to be marrying a girl so old But your father insisted that you remain chaste Until he died And unfortunately for you That meant remaining unwed Until the tarnished age of sixteen We are also made to understand That you have been christened Evelyn the Bold Because you refuse to lay with your husband Or any man Who is not of your choosing And that you shall command your kingdom on your own Regardless of who you marry His Holy Father wanted to name you Evelyn the Devil Incarnate But he had a change of heart When your kingdom decided To build a cathedral in his honor Smart move, by the way We are the monarchs Of the neighboring kingdoms ...

Dear Virgina, I left you a note At the bottom of the sea Written in waterproof ink That tells a story About a girl Who met a man And washed away Please understand that I, myself Am not depressed Or sad Or in any way feeling the way You must have felt When you decided That life was too much In no way am I minimizing Your pain Or your struggle But I feel a kinship with you That I can’t explain The other day I was younger Much younger A version of myself I don’t remember And I found myself sitting in the middle of a lake Dry as a bone Wondering why the water Wouldn’t touch me I’m older now But I’m not old Or at least That’s what I tell myself And water still won’t Give me a second look I met him somewhere between The younger version And the me I am now And I thought I would know him forever And never really know him at all He was that sort of a person We met on the land But after ten seconds ...

Dear Helen, We hear you’re living in Scoville now Past the lake where the soldiers wash their clothes Next to the market where the minotaur works In a little house With little windows That you can barely see out of And dark curtains that hang over them Like the mirrors of a mourner In the heart of his grief Do you know what we hear now At the church to Athena? Or at the picnics While the goats are roasting And the virgins dance? We hear— ‘How is your niece Helen doing?’ And we have to smile And tell them about your wedding The one we won’t be attending Because it takes place At the altar of an enemy A kidnapper A man with no god And no principles Who takes, takes, takes Which is not unlike a man But which is nothing To be celebrated We walk around the park In our sneakers And sweaters Because the weather Has a chill now That even the memory of summer Can’t scare away And in the middle of the park ...