Supporting Role
by Matilda Young
You can exit singing
above the flats
to the left of center stage,
your hat held lightly
in your right hand and away
as if you were shaking
its hand goodbye.
In rehearsal, Cole coached you
“lighter, lighter, lighter,”
his hands a merry palsy
on the upright’s wooden cover.
He laughed, delighted,
when you tried to hold
some taut, leaning stance
with the intensity of vibrato
and defeat. “Darling boy,
you’re the failed suitor,
never to return, so this
is yours, your moment, dear,
but no one is supposed
to notice it too much,”
and when he stood
to shake your hand,
it looked to you
in profile
that he would have had
a dancer’s perfect line.
He had told you
“some of us are supposed to go
without regret – heroic, dear.
so take it graciously,”
back at the piano calling
“lighter, lighter, lighter”:
sweat seducing his collar down,
his forehead vulnerable
in blonde retreat.
So now you exit –
the chorus silent,
the piano silent,
his face a grave mask
at the baby grand.
You are measuring out
a disappearance
in the closing dark,
feeling your way
by the cracks
in the floor clotted
from repair, and then,
as you’re halfway
through the wings,
Porter picks up
the next opening bars.
Matilda Young (she/they) is a poet with an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Maryland. They have been published in several journals, including Anti-Heroin Chic, Angel City Review, and Entropy Magazine’s Blackcackle. She enjoys Edgar Allan Poe jokes, haphazard suburban birding, and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn.
