Dearest Kate,

             I’m coming home, if only for the briefest of reunions.
It’s been too long—too long—and it makes me wonder about time
and the passage of time on the other, on your, side.  

Where do I start?  Then, in those heady college years when we first met,
decades ago, me wandering (as I was wont to do in those what-the-hell
does-it-even-mean and where-the-hell am-I-even-going days in the hills
of Eastern Kentucky.  At Morehead State University.  Behind the locked doors)
of Button Auditorium, where, late in the nights, you’d come to me.  As I rehearsed
lines in the green rooms, hammer nails like poignant words into bird’s eye boards,
or painting base layers beneath set colors on the surface of flats for the Production
class (I think I ended up failing, for not showing up).  I didn’t show up for many,
to be honest, but I lived that year and a half surrounded by the same set pieces
and cobbled walls and musty curtains you seemed hesitant to leave behind. 

And you would come to me, when everyone else had gone, when even my roommate,
Master of lights and sound, left his equipment unplugged and silent, left but one spot
light in a pool, centerstage, so I could continue to work in the collective absence
of actors, of actresses, stagehands, or director. I remember

the way I’d hear you talking, laughing, dancing in the light of the dressing rooms
(though I’d turned off all the lights before exiting and locking up) when I’d walk
behind the theater, for the night.  Those lights gleaming, again, through frosted glass,
so that I couldn’t see what you might be up to, only stop in cool, autumn air, and
listen.  Listen to the lady so many had heard, seen, experienced, though practicality
and greater logic said she was a theater myth.

And the one night when I crouched, paint brush in hand, the absolute silence
only ever experienced in a vast, old room, heavy with history, sheltering a gravity
of decades of drama, and dramatic personalities, and mirrored ecstatic response
from the audiences—and in that silence, as I stroked the muslin, I felt you come.
Turning, I saw the one spring-loaded seat in the front row slowly, so very slowly,
descend.  I said,                           
                               “Kate.  I’m not in the mood tonight.”
                                                                                                  And that seat, so slowly,
returned to its natural, upright and unoccupied  state.

Twenty-plus years and I remember that moment.  The way you moved, and I spoke,
and you responded.  And twenty-plus years of interaction with those who yet held
possession of their physical bodies and they—they have not moved, have not responded.

One moment of connection.
One moment burned in my memory.
One moment and one woman (however spectral, however intangible, however
equally unattainable in this or whatever remains of a life). 

I’m coming home, if only for the briefest of reunions.
And I’m feeling less than tangible myself.
And I’m hoping you’ll meet me, again,
there.                                                                        
                                                                                                   Forever regards,

                                                                                                         But One of Your Many Actors