Is this all we've got now? No priests to say yes son, your suffering meant something, no kings on the battlefield to say yes soldier, your suffering … - Sarah Ruhl

Then she said, “Your plays balance on air I mean they are air I mean they are performed in air so they are air. “If a whole city could balance on a seed then a city could balance on a play because a play is air and everything is air. “Your next play should be about a seed because a seed is smaller than an almond. Or maybe your next play should be smaller than an almond, about nothing, about air.

Listen to her the way you would listen
to your own daughter
if she died too young
and tried to speak to you
across long distances.

This was the house that Paula had taken me and two other graduate students to years earlier. She had told us to go out on the deck, look at the view of the Atlantic Ocean, and say to ourselves, This is what playwriting can buy.