THIRD ACT

Everyone I know
has a face behind a curtain.

When it comes down
it’s a bombastic sound
as loud as the cannon fire
in Tchaikovsky’s “War of 1812.”

When the show is over,
people I know are cloistered
in darkness, but make their own light.
They can’t get out, and I can’t get in.

Let me in, I cry!
“Can’t”— is all I hear
as their curtains descend.

This must be how it ends.