If it isn’t I, your ever-faithful (and often forgotten) friend, Carlo.
How do you spend your holidays? Is it lonely behind the theatre stage when the curtains are drawn and the lights are cold? Do you still sweep the boards and listen to the rafters creak like they’re whispering secrets? Have you met anyone new… anyone who laughs as loud as we used to?
Father and I shall attend your puppet Prince show. He says he has business in town, though he never says with whom or for what. He rarely says much at all unless it concerns work. Still, I am hoping, perhaps foolishly, that while he busies himself, I might slip backstage and find you among the painted scenery and tangled strings. I could help you set the props, untangle the marionettes, mend a seam or two. And after, maybe we could steal a quiet moment and pretend we are younger than we are.
I am usually glad when the holidays end. They feel too long, too still. But this one… this one is different.
I must give away Rosaura.
You remember her, don’t you? She was my companion long before I knew your name, before the theatre, before the dust of the stage ever settled in my hair. I had imagined introducing you at last. I thought you would make her bow in that dramatic way of yours, and I would laugh as though nothing in the world could ever change.
But it seems I have “grown too old.” At least, that is what Father says. And he needs a puppet to study…the mechanics, the joints, the silence of wood that does not protest when pulled by strings. Rosaura will be useful in ways I never wished her to be.
So I shall say farewell to her soon. I want one last look at her painted smile before time rubs it away in my memory. I am afraid that in a few years…perhaps even sooner…I will struggle to remember the exact shade of her dress, or the tilt of her head when she listened to me as though I mattered.
It is a strange thing, to outgrow what once kept you company in the quiet.
I hope I shall not outgrow you too.
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