Limelight (CONTEST)

Beautiful and graceful, I am not. 1

This face will never turn heads or launch a thousand ships, these wide hips will never illicit catcalls, these small hands and smaller fingers will never crook and beckon all the world to their knees. 2

But when I'm onstage, oh, once those footlights and stage lights come up, I'm whatever I please. I can do better than bring them kneeling - I can bring them to their feet. I can bring their laughter, call down their tears, and call out long-buried questions and secrets as they lie in bed hours later. I can get into their heads.3

I am an actor - the stage provides an identity for me, the chance to be the person/people I've always longed to be: the best, the worst. The.4

'Cause when you're playing a girl swooning at a fifties crooner, when you're playing half of two young lovebirds over the moon, you don't have to face that you're fat and alone. When you spend hours in rehearsal on a daily basis, it buys precious hours away from home. When you're a doctor dealing that last emotional blow, when you're a mother crying with joy that her baby doesn't have to go away just yet, when you're taking a stand to chance starting controversy to stop hate, you can forget. 5

You can believe, for a minute, that the people you've been is the person you are, and you can believe it when they say it won't take much to be a star. When that director smiles and says you've got it, you can forget that you never got that from your father. And if that isn't quite enough, well, at least it's some sort of love when they stop you in the street and say "you were something". 6

I know it's all true as I stand on the stage, listening to the director, perfectly engaged. Each show is work, each scene a battle I strategise and plot to win in secret hopes of felling the one castle I'll never get in. I work my hardest every day, push myself to stress and strain and tears, all so they'll call me "something". And I hope that, in a few years, when I've finished up at college, I can rise above my peers to be the best. I hope that someday I'll believe the ones who say I'm great, hope that I can love myself, and him, and let go of the hate. 7

But until that day comes, until I'm ready to stand naked beneath the sun, I'll stand costumed in the limelight, and work to make the audience come undone.