Theatrical - spoken by a character in my play, 'The Riddle'

Words by Susan Abraham

...

Julian

(Alone, Julian remembers his old love Claire, 22 years ago, as he gazes longingly at her picture. He cradles her photograph & presses it to his chest, stopping every now and then to gaze into it. He prances up and down the stage in a delirium.)

"And to a past encounter, the heart is quite dead, I must say. Just the other day, my old friend, a rush of teardrops, packed up a damp glisten and fled, pleading another sadder season.

" 'Book the usual,' they scream but I cannot awaken from my dream. My word are tame and my actions lame in the omen of this dreadful waiting game.

"Hah! That my emotions swear I am one so easily bowled over by premonition...

"So what if my merry heart had catapulted from its long sharp bliss to the bolt of a sudden halt.

"Peace be upon its soul where by trickery it had been sold for gold and so now, this enduring tragedy

"And in dissecting of its heartstrings with my famous forensic discourse, I would on observing its pallid pallor, caressed upon the icy table like a frozen king with folded clapped-up wings ..locked in its morgue-like status..

(voice fades, crestfallen expression & immediately rises)

...forget my bewitching bravery and remember and remember with a stalwart remembrance not known to man but now hovers strangely in tantalising gloom like a flower forgotten of its infinite bloom."

(quickens his pace and tells himself in exhilaration)

"You madman, go and see her now. Quickly and at once. At once, you fool...at once...