The Theatre

Squeezing my camera into my palm, I step over the window’s broken glass into the back of the theatre. Here, the empty building holds its dust and structure. Hear the sounds and cold air at your ears – bite!

I run along the rows of salmon pink seats, no - crimson under dust. I draw a line to reveal the red, snapped my photo, but the screen reveals nothing. I zoom in, but here there is a finger, here - there is sat an old man squinting to see the stage. His eyes widen, look to me, to behind himself – shush! I spin round as an echoing silence of laughter and applause rings in my ears. From a room this big, I could picture the people; the shuffling of feet and repressed coughs. The man is gone, I look back through my lens. Pointing up at the broken stage, I capture nothing so I put my camera away. In the space where the stage had sunk, I look over individual costumes and thickly painted makeup running down sweaty faces from the gold tinted lights. This perfectly precise atmosphere hangs around me in a sadness that makes me feel – tragedy, comedy, drama, music.

Faith Dale-Hughes, Print Copy Editor

Author’s Note: When the nights are long, and your emotion is full. You can still find the light, If you look to the moon.

All is sensation, the world falls asleep. Float in the hollow, sink into the deep.

Tomorrow is silent, salvation is empty. Her waiting whisper, sorrow in the plenty.

Devil in her begging, lucid hope in her dreams. Turning in the bitter, till light shines through the seams.

Before is nothing, she lives in the vacant. Only now is real, exists for the patient.