DO YOU HEAR ME STARS? BY JEFFREY LO (DOWNLOAD PDF HERE)
SARA, alone with the stars.
SARA:
Hey.
It’s me.
Again.
Do you hear me?
Hard to tell sometimes since you don’t –
What am I saying? Obviously you don’t –
I guess. It’s just that since you are the only ones that I have…
It’d be nice to get some sort of something.
Something resembling a response.
Resembling interaction?
Resembling… –
I don’t know.
Anyway, hello.
Here I am.
(Silence. SARA closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.)
Here I am…
(Beat)
Do you ever get the feeling that, maybe, we have a problem with being unhappy?
Like… you take stock of everything in your life
Every detail in every nook of your being and you can’t quite find anything wrong with it
Like REALLY wrong not kinda wrong but REALLY wrong
You can’t find any of that but you sit and you sit and you think and you think
And you land on… I am unhappy.
…
…
I feel that way.
Like all the time. And I don’t know why.
And I don’t know if anyone else feels this way.
For all I know this is a normal way to feel.
The only ones I’m talking to about this is you guys and –
Well. Yeah.
I can’t talk to others about it because, like, don’t you hear how it sounds?
It sounds so… I don’t know.
Like. Nothing is wrong.
Everything is fine, all things considered it’s just…
Unhappy.
Unsatisfied.
Un… something.
…
…
Not enough words…
There should be more words…
(Pause)
I think there would be more words for sadness if we weren’t meant to feel embarrassed about it.
And I don’t know why we’re made to feel so embarrassed about it when it seems so easy for us to end up that way.
What about you guys?
Up there.
Or girls, now that I think of it.
Or…
Hell.
You’re stars.
Boy… girl… you don’t need it
You are stars…
(Pause)
I’ll be one of you someday.
I think.
Don’t laugh.
I don’t know if you’re laughing but if you are – don’t.
That’s what I think and that thought is just as reasonable to have than any other…
It might not be right but…
But…
I hope so…
…
Because.
…
…
If I do become a star.
(SARA contemplates this more.)
Because, after all of this, if I do become a star…
Then that would be nice.
And I reckon I would feel that.
…
A star…
END OF PLAY.