Dark stage. A soft spotlight fades in, revealing a woman standing at center stage. She holds a photograph in her hands. Warm lighting. Profound silence. She speaks to the audience, but at times, it feels like she’s speaking to herself.

Woman (gentle, yet firm voice):
She looks at the photo, as if searching for an answer within it.

Parents are brief.
Mother and father… they’re brief because they don’t linger.
(looks upward, as if invoking them)
No matter how much time we have — they never truly linger.

She steps forward twice. The light follows.
They’re like mirrors that barely reflect us —
never long enough for us to see them the way we wish to be seen.
(soft gesture over her chest)
The sorrows. The truths. The ones that live inside us too — yet we deny them, as if they weren’t ours.

She sits quietly in a chair. A cold side light gradually illuminates.
And still… they taught us love.
Through the straight lines of care.
Through the very mistakes we repeat, hoping to get it right.

Silence. She rises, slowly, deliberately.
We are our parents.
In likeness. In contradiction. In the precision that sometimes hurts.
In what we accept — or reject.
(looks directly at the audience, intense)
We are them.

Spotlight softens. Backstage lighting glows faintly — like a memory forming.
But… parents are brief.
They don’t wait for us to be ready to forgive.
They don’t wait for us to know how to truly say thank you.

She walks slowly toward the dim glow at the back.
They carry us — and we carry them.
Blind to the shared humanity that shapes and undoes us.

Parents are fleeting.
Fleeting as the countless memories that erupt inside us.
Fleeting in the celebrations they’ll never join —
of things we’ve yet to find,
the same things they once searched for
beyond their own mothers and fathers.

Final light nears. She stops. Looks at the photograph, then presses it gently to her chest.

To us, who struggle so much to accept them.
To them, who did — or didn’t — accept our resistance.
It doesn’t matter.

To us…
and to them.
Parents and children who, in these crossing roles,
did what they could.

Eyes close. Her voice trembles, but holds a quiet peace.

The possible gratitude…
from a woman still incomplete.

Lights slowly fade to black. Absolute silence. End.

©️ Beatriz Esmer