Ghost Light

photo by  Paul Butzi

If you wait long enough after a show, everyone will leave. Some run out as soon as the curtain closes, eager to beat the others to the parking lot. Some stay to talk. Some chase after actors. But if you wait long enough, everyone leaves, taking their noise and presence with them, until the theater is perfectly empty.

If you wait long enough after a show, the magic floating in the air settles in a sparkling powder across the stage, gently dusting the armrests of seats and aisles. It's sticky and cool, and it leaves marks on your fingers, your skin, your clothes. Should you rub it on your hands, and drag it in dark streaks across your face, you'll shine and reek of memories that only you can see.

If you wait long enough after a show, the show disappears completely, every emotion you had drains out through your feet, into the floor, until you're so empty and realistic again that you're sure that the basement beneath you must be flooded with the emotions that've been left and forgotten, dripping through the seats and armrests and carpets and floors, leaking through the ceiling.

Then the ghost light. An elegant stand, gracefully made at the bottom builds up to nothing, a single bulb. It's suddenly there. Never to be seen backstage or before, just now, in this moment. The bulb is harsh, swollen, with a flaming filament that's hard to look at. It casts strange shadows, but as spectral as it is, there's a cleansing to it, forcing away all remnants of stage lighting, replacing the busy entertainment with this singularity. They say it's there for different things. That keeps away ghosts. That it scares off bad luck. That it wards off the sadness of a dark theater. That it keeps the theater running. That it's for safety. 

They say it gives the ghosts a chance to perform, to have the stage to themselves in the long, empty shadows.