Playwright Portrait, Crystal Skillman, Excerpt from Birthday

The Playwright Crystal Skillman, 2006

pswb©2012

Birthday

LEILA

In my building.

When it was snowing out of nowhere here last month.

All these seagulls fl y past my windows.

Fucking weird, right?

Right in the snow.

The way they moved, right up to the windows, glide

their bodies right by, then raise up, that’s grace I

thought.

I’d like to move like that.

Some people make mistakes but can move through

them, let them go and they don’t hurt.

They don’t cry in hallways and look like shit.

They sit in corners and keep it all inside.

But I can’t.

I have this wish, the way I want things to be.

And when I see it, in my head, it’s good, it’s good but

how can I make that…

I dream about it.

Being that.

I wake up.

It’s a feeling.

Alive like…

Like there are all these possibilities.

But I wake up.

I lose it.