Rehearsal
No one tells you the story is over. The narrator just stops returning your calls. The lights stay on a little too long, and you think maybe there’s more, a second act somewhere in the silence. There’s a girl in a hallway fixing her hair with both hands, thinking that’s all it takes to survive what she’s about to walk into. A boy watches from the stairwell, thinking he understands longing. He doesn’t. Down the block, someone sells roses in twos one for what might happen, one for what won’t. Most people buy both, because they’re cowards who still believe in middle ground. How many times did we practice what we’d say if love ever showed up? How many times was it here wearing something else something messier, something already wrinkled from someone else’s floor? And still, we wait by the stage door with our lines memorized, our hands open, our mouths rehearsing the last true thing we never got to say.
Yeah. The script still loops… back then I chose silence but I wish I’d simply said eff off. I guess silence means the same thing but eff off might have been more liberating. 🖤
This poem feels like someone quietly admitting how life never gives you clean endings.
The line about the narrator not returning your calls hit me in a very real way — that’s exactly how things fade.
The girl fixing her hair and the boy thinking he understands longing… it feels like watching younger versions of all of us.
The roses in twos — one for hope, one for disappointment — that detail stays under the skin.
I felt exposed by the line about people buying both because they still believe in the middle ground.
The questions about rehearsing what we’d say if love ever arrived made me think of all the times I didn’t recognize it.
And the idea that love shows up messy, already carrying someone else’s wrinkles — that’s painfully true.
There’s something heartbreaking about waiting by the stage door with lines you never got to use.
It captures that feeling of being ready too late, or ready for the wrong version of love.
By the end, it feels like someone standing just offstage in their own life, still hoping for one last chance to speak.