In which a window opens and a cold wind blows in
The metallic sound of a piano, out of tune. Light is blue. There is not much light. Stage is slick, shimmering, sheet of ice. WOMAN, in a long black coat, black boots, head down, appears stage left. Here and there, snow. In fact, snow is falling. WOMAN looks up, out at the audience looking up at the snow, covered too, in snow, but only for a moment. As if she, too, is snowing.
WOMAN arrives center stage. A hole the size of a manhole cover has been cut with an augur. WOMAN stands for a long time before the hole. WOMAN removes her jacket, boots, pair of mittens, hat. WOMAN takes a step toward the hole, into the hole. A leg disappears, comes back blue. WOMAN places one no two legs into the hole. And the movement so quick and silent. The audience does not laugh.
Rebecca Valley is a poet and essayist from Saint Albans, Vermont. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Rattle, Figure 1, Up the Staircase Quarterly, ELKE: a little journal, and more. She was the winner of the 2019 Academy of American Poets Prize at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the 2019 Young Writers Project Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center. She is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches creative writing and composition. She also serves as the founder and editor-in-chief of Drizzle Review, a book review site with a focus on minority authors and books in translation. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccavalley.com.