THE BOY WHO DISAPPEARED

A young man sits on stage, narrating into a tape recorder.

Despite myself, I still dream of you. I’m lost in an inky pool of space, and your face is the only color in my life. I catch glimpses of you throughout the day, stopping in my tracks and remembering that last night you called me your starlight.

I’m sorry about all the times I called you a geek. I just liked pestering you. I’ve actually always found it really endearing on you, even though I thought it wasn’t my thing. Ever since you left, I’ve been going through the sci-fi section in the library in alphabetical order: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke. They’re good. Turns out it isn’t all just physicists who think knowing advanced calculus means they also know how to write a book. So, you know, my bad.

I know what a black hole is now. It’s crazy, it perfectly describes how I feel: an emptiness so dense that no light can escape. Ha.

Where are you? Did you really find a way to slip between the cracks of spacetime, or did you just pack up and skip town? You didn’t even say goodbye…

I hope you’re doing well, wherever you are. At night I look up at the stars and I wonder if one of them is you, in your spaceship, finally at home.

He clicks the STOP button on the machine. He sighs in frustration. He pulls the cassette out and pulls the thing apart, ripping up the tape.

Lucas Simone performing this monologue during and carry what lingers...