Intermission: Love's Curtain Call Before the Next Act

Published on August 3, 2025 | By Jaziz Vian N. Cortez

The embrace dissolves like a theater fade-out—house lights down, but the stage is still warm from the performance. This suspended animation between lovers isn't an ending, but the dramatic pause where the audience holds its breath for Act Two.

Backstage, time becomes a costume designer, quietly altering details while preserving the story's essence. What returns may wear different contours, but will hum the same thematic melody when the spotlight finds it again.

The space between acts accumulates meaning like stage directions scribbled in margins—"enter from up left," "kiss delivered with hesitation." These annotations transform absence into a collaborative script we rewrite daily through remembered touch.

Some productions close unexpectedly, their potential matinees cancelled by circumstance. But those who whisper "intermission" instead of "final bow" keep reserving seats for a show that refuses to post closing notices.

The curtain rests heavy but rise-ready, its velvet folds holding the shape of what pressed against it last. Every love story earns its intermissions—the silent spaces where applause echoes forward from some future performance we can't yet see but feel in our bones.

| Jessica Jody Usi