[The stage is bathed in soft amber light. A solitary figure sits on stone steps center stage, dressed in a white dress with a small neck scarf. Autumn leaves drift lazily around her. She holds a journal and a pen, speaking as if to someone not there — or perhaps deeply present.]

I write to you from the steps of public spaces… from the quiet corners of my heart.

It is a brilliant autumn’s day. My dress is white — foolishly bright against the golden trees — and my scarf, the one you always said made me look like a bird caught mid-flight, is knotted gently at my throat. Children are blowing bubbles nearby. They chase them, laughing, and the sun catches the light — turns it into tiny rainbow gliders. Just for a moment, I forget the world. Just for a moment, I’m a child again.

I close my eyes and listen.

The colors change when I do that — the sky behind my eyelids melts into strawberry candy pink. Not real, but vivid. I can still feel the sunlight pushing through… warming parts of me that’ve been cold too long.

A clink of coins. Someone rushing past. The hiss of buses. The pulse of traffic signals: beep… beep… beep. Children’s laughter. A greeting tossed like a pebble. Leaves scrubbing the concrete in their autumnal helicopter dance.

My pen keeps moving. I don’t know who I’m writing for anymore. Maybe just for you.

I feel as if I’ve misplaced the clarity of the world — like it got tucked away in a drawer I can’t reach. Slowly, I am dimming a sense. Just one. Like a flower whispering a candle flame to sleep. They say when one sense fades, the others grow bolder. I close my eyes again, and feel glass biting at my feet as I walk. The traffic breathes nearby, a living thing.

I want to ask you something — something sweet and strange: What would it feel like to kiss me?

Not now — but as if we’d known each other forever. As if this white dress were the same I wore when we dreamed up love together. When we still trusted the ink to tell the truth.

You’d say, “Write me a letter.”

And I’d wonder — how would you read it? With your eyes closed?

One sense extinguished… all the rest blazing like fire in a paper lantern.

And I’d ask: Will anyone else read it?

“No, my love,” you’d whisper. “Write the words and I’ll feel their ghosts in the ink. I’ll trace the letters backwards, slowly. Write of the rest of the world — of all its simple dimensions. Write it with your eyes closed, but everything else inside you burning.”

[She presses her hand to her chest. The light deepens to crimson. The leaves swirl once, then settle. Silence.]

©️ Beatriz Esmer