Written by Donnell Creppel

He walks straight into the Opera Foyer.
No one is there.
The crowds are all gone.
Everyone's safely in their homes.
The little children are in bed.
The husbands and wives
Cuddle before their fires.
All of the loved people are gone away.
Now there is only He.

He envies them,
Those tall, handsome, rich men
With beautiful wives and children.
Those pompous arrogant men,
Who take it all for granted.
He hates them,
With their houses on the hill,
With their shutters thrown open,
With their average mundane lives.

He wants to be one of them,
Have their loving families
And their worrisome mothers.

Deep down he loves them.
Vicariously, he lives their lives.
He watches from Box 5
And imagines he is one of them,
Imagines that it is not a necessity to
Hide from the world, letting his disfigurement rule him.
He imagines that he is "Someone like everyone else."

In the darkness of his abode,
In his living tomb,
Right in the foyer,
There on the Grand Staircase
He tears off the wretched crutch, that wretched mask,
Revealing before the statues of Angels the face of living death.
He throws his arms high into the air and cries out:
"Why!!²