The Plays
The Talking Chairs [sample]
by Charles L. Mee
DEBARGO
Do you believe in love at first sight?
TESSA
No. Oh, no.
Certainly not.
DEBARGO
It's the truth.
TESSA
So?
DEBARGO
So what?
TESSA
So why do you tell me this?
DEBARGO
Because perhaps this is how it is for us.
TESSA
How can this be after all these years we've known one another?
DEBARGO
Because sometimes you don't see the other person at first.
And then suddenly you do.
You sense something in one another.
You might not even know what it is.
In fact, probably you never know,
the connection is so deep,
beneath the place where language even starts.
And then, if you let the moment pass, it is past forever.
And what you never know is:
was this a great love or not?
Was this your one great love
that you've just missed.
Because each of us is given only one great love in life.
That's what all the poets have known.
We've forgotten it in our times.
I think we get too caught up in our daily lives.
But people used to know:
you are born,
you have one great love,
you die.
There's nothing else to life.
That's why, in Romeo and Juliet,
after they find their love,
they die.
Because that's the truth of it:
birth, love, and death,
that's all there is.
Your great love may come at the beginning of your life,
or in the middle,
or near the end.
Or not at all.
But there is only one
and if you miss it,
you've missed it forever.
