Scene: “The Threshold of Flame and Thread”
Setting: A twilight garden, half-wild, half-tended. Vines curl around marble columns. A table stands between two chairs—one draped in crimson silk, the other in worn parchment scrolls.
Characters:
Goracio: Dionysian, radiant, impulsive, sensual. Wears wine-stained robes and speaks in poetic bursts.
Witness: Senecan, composed, deliberate, philosophical. Wears a scholar’s cloak and carries a small book of meditations.
Act II, Scene IV
Goracio (entering with a goblet of pomegranate wine):
The pulse! The ache! The feast of flesh!
You speak of bonds, but I—
I am the hunger before the vow.
The glint in the eye before the name is spoken.
Why do you bind the flame with thread?
Witness (rising slowly):
Because the flame, untethered, consumes.
And thread—woven with care—becomes a cradle.
You chase the shimmer of youth, Goracio,
But love is not a chase. It is a return.
Goracio (laughs, circling):
Return? To what?
To the dull rhythm of duty?
To the fading scent of a lover grown familiar?
No—desire is the wine!
It must spill, stain, intoxicate!
Witness (calmly):
Desire is the wine, yes.
But the vessel matters.
Hormones stir the first sip—
Testosterone, estrogen, dopamine—
They are the chorus that begins the song.
But the melody deepens with time.
Goracio (pauses, intrigued):
You speak of melody.
Yet I hear silence in your bonds.
Witness (softly):
Silence is not absence.
It is the space where meaning grows.
When the body no longer shouts,
The soul begins to whisper.
Goracio (sits, suddenly weary):
I have danced with many.
Felt the fire, the frenzy.
But it fades. Always.
Why does the flame dim?
Witness (placing a hand on Goracio’s shoulder):
Because the body changes.
Hormones ebb.
But the mind—
The mind learns to see differently.
To desire not the curve, but the gesture.
Not the thrill, but the echo.
Goracio (quietly):
And what of love?
Witness (smiling):
Love is the ritual that remains
When the feast is over.
It is the thread that binds flame to form.
Not to extinguish it—
But to give it shape.
***
See Author's notes on the play.
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