![\"A](\"https:\/\/imaginedtheatres.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_4209-700x525.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The audience waits in dim light. They hear the sound of paper fluttering, sliding, and crinkling, before they see the source of the sound: a scroll continuously winding and unwinding around two invisible spools. The paper of the scroll is thin, translucent, skin-like. Ink seeps into the paper to form words, like blood bleeding out of veins behind the skin. For a while, the light remains dim, so that the audience can only recognize the dark shapes as words but cannot read them. Then, gradually, the light becomes bright enough for the audience to read the words that continuously unroll on the moving scroll, only fragments of phrases in focus at any moment.<\/em><\/p>\n Not a sound Light moves up from the moving scroll so that the audience can see two hands cranking it from above. The skin of the hands is thin, translucent, paper-like.<\/em><\/p>\n No lips to part Light moves further up. From the hands emerge the arms, and then a body of dark veins, all entangled like lines of words. The veins climb towards a dark opening at the edge of the lighted area. Silent shapes of words gush out as dark lips continuously touch and part. <\/em><\/p>\n No lids Light moves further up. Two eyes catch the light and glimmer like pools of ink. They are dark, infinitely deep, saturated, unlike the frail and arid scroll paper.<\/em><\/p>\n No black out The rolling speed of the scroll picks up.<\/em><\/p>\n Brain tired straining Breath shaking Losing heart It is rolling so fast that the entire scroll is trembling. The paper and the body become almost indistinguishable from each other, simultaneously merging into and tearing away from each other.<\/em><\/p>\n Imagine me<\/p>\n The rolling speed of the scroll slows down.<\/em><\/p>\n my eyes<\/p>\n Light gradually moves down\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n my lips<\/p>\n \u2014until only the hands are visible.<\/em><\/p>\n my voice<\/p>\n The scroll pauses for a moment and then continues to roll.<\/em><\/p>\n Ever guess where the flash came from It starts again in you, doesn\u2019t it Light begins to dim.<\/em><\/p>\n On and off Light has now become so dim that the words are mere shadows.<\/em><\/p>\n No sound but the crinkles \u2026<\/p>\n The play restarts in the dim light as the scroll loops back on itself.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 The audience waits in dim light. They hear the sound of paper fluttering, sliding, and crinkling, before they see the source of the sound: a scroll continuously winding and unwinding around two invisible spools. The paper of the scroll is thin, translucent, skin-like. Ink seeps into the paper to form words, like blood bleeding […]","protected":false},"menu_order":0,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/theatres\/1398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/theatres"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/theatre"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
no sound but the crinkles
vibrating over a membrane
a skin with no flesh
drained of blood
how thin you have become
a surface of haze<\/p>\n
lips too dry to squeeze words into shape
the words you once made me speak
now flattened, colorless, stilled, yet still moving
as a voice I visited you, remember
how thin I was then
a blur in the shadow<\/p>\n
eyes wide open
screens pumped by dark veins
waiting for footsteps pressing into the skull
the beginning of next breath
the sudden flash<\/p>\n
no fade to light
always a shade
eyes turned to the page
small black strokes that suck them in
the only way to close eyes while open
thought you were safe, didn\u2019t you
in that little world behind your eyes
waiting for nothing but the next word
all the while
straining to breathe
to hear the feet
to close the lids<\/p>\n
all the time
weighing down the breath
softening the footsteps in the skull
squeezing the lids when the flash comes
<\/span>tearing words into painless sounds
cannot go on
all the time<\/span><\/p>\n
footsteps piercing
<\/span>sudden flash
words cutting through flesh<\/p>\n
cannot go on
all the time
so you thinned
<\/span>and I thickened
<\/span>sucking you out of you
absorbing you into me<\/span><\/p>\n
ever try to guess what it was like
body slowly drying up till so thin
a sheet like the page
remember how it was
<\/span>how quietly I screamed behind every word you read
a roar too low to hear
how plainly I gazed at you as you saw through me
<\/span>a skin swallowed by shadows<\/span><\/p>\n
you feel it rolling, don\u2019t you
get your eyes off me, you would have screamed
<\/span>let me speak, you would have pleaded
<\/span>unrelenting fingers, you would have sighed
<\/span>look at you now
a skin with no flesh
drained of blood
so pale in light
too powerless to fight
<\/span>a wrapper ever folding in on itself<\/p>\n
around and around
words thicken into shadow and shadow thins into words<\/p>\n
in this crinkling voice I speak
<\/span>it starts again in you, doesn\u2019t it
you feel it rolling, don\u2019t you
<\/span>on and off
around and around<\/span><\/p>\n