An Opera in Five Concise Acts

Prologue.

Assemble objects from a girl’s life. {Fairy tales, baby dolls, blood,
broken bones, baby teeth, piggy bank, pop beads, jewelry box,
hula hoop, Dick and Jane, Nancy Drew, polished agates, four-leaf clovers,
Emeraude, blue suede shoes, forty-fives, diary (no key), pom poms, sewing kit,
figure skates, Play Do, tap shoes, tonsils, birth stone, bookmarks, stubby crayons,
tea set, cowgirl boots, Easter hat.}  Store them in a barrel, 90-proof.

Act I.  Scene- Years later.

Woman.  Pieces pile.  Decades of brokenness.   A few lucid moments. 
Swirly eye of agate. Swatches of Rapunzel’s golden hair.
Red scraps of cloak.  Shards of Cinderella’s slipper. 
Dark piece of Sleeping Beauty’s beauty. 
Diary pages torn, unreadable.
A green leaf spared from a cast-off lucky clover. 
Silver coins, round edges mashed in dirt. 
Baby doll, left arm missing, dead on the street.

Chorus.  We pour ourselves a rummy shot, a rummy shot of life;
We drink the sweet and bittersweet, the sugar and the blight.
Bottles never empty and drunks are never filled;
We break our bottles into bits on Alcoholic Hill.

Act II.  Scene- The same.

Woman.  Watercolors rain downhill.

Act III.  Scene- The same.

Woman.  I get confused describing. 
Is it a man or a fish?
Homo sapiens or barracuda?
Both are made by God.
But which is fish eyed, scaly skin and tearing teeth?
And which hails from farmland baling love?
One is piercing.  The other pierced.  Green lungs,
but whose?  Briny brain, but whose?
Which brings everyday chaos,
laughter made from dirt?

Act IV.  Scene- Temple of the Goddess.

Goddess.  Sweep up this mess.

Woman.  I sweep brokenness long and hard.
Goddess.  Lay the fragments to rest.  Let’s go hand in hand, not one before the other.

Act V.  Curtain opens.