SKETCH

 (A One Act Play by Bob Zolnerzak)

 

First, understand, we were both drunk.
Good food, great partners, intimacies.
Then----you say it. Nothing to cancel it. That which is said----hangs in the air. OK---well---you said it because you wanted to----define yourself to me.
But it wasn't anything I'd asked to hear. Or that you really NEEDED to say!
Yet, you said it.
I promise I won't remember it, because that's not the reason you said it.
You bared your sadness, and I pretended not to notice you dabbing at your tears.
"Love ya," you said when we parted, and I, stupid, could only parrot back, a few second later: "Love ya!" Not to increase the ante, not to decrease the sharing---yet I'd stolen it from you and felt guilty returning it.
Why do I even try to recall the pain?
It's YOUR pain: you can't share it with me!
But you touched me---when and where I didn't want to be touched.
So I write about you, to get rid of your emotion----dumped onto me.
That's not fair! You wanted to express yourself to YOU, and you did. I just happened to be in the way.
And now I express myself---like ex-pressing a pimple, to get rid of the pus.
That's not the way it is at all!