I stand on stage, looking out over rows of dark seats. The theater is lit only by the sunlight that streams down through holes in the roof, the largest beam falling on the stage like a spotlight. The seats rise in rows before me, their once deep red fabric now faded and torn, everything covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Part of the balcony has collapsed, and most of the murals that covered the walls and ceiling now lie, crumbled and flaking, in piles on the floor. Ragged cloth dangles in tatters around the stage, and pieces of the collapsing ceiling hang like curtains.

I step forward into the dazzling stage lights, feeling the familiar thrill of adrenaline, equal parts excitement and terror. Behind the blinding light the audience is lost in shadow, a vast watchful presence, a held breath full of anticipation. Every eye is on me, and I begin.

The theater is empty, and silent, and slowing collapsing. I am certainly no actor. But here is a stage, and here is a spotlight of slanted morning sun. And here for an audience are the myriad ghosts I carry. All the world’s a stage…

I fling my arms out dramatically, throwing my weathered cloak back with a flourish. It’s no grand theater costume, but then I’ve never thought of myself as playing the part of a lord. If I have any role, it’s the fool. But here, this morning, I’ll play a part. I’ll put on a show.

With all the drama I can muster, I stride forward to the edge of the stage, into the sunlight, the spotlight. Decay has ruined the acoustics of the space, but I can amplify my voice enough to make up for that. When I speak, my words echo through the vast, silent theater, startling a colony of bats who had taken up residence under the remaining part of the balcony. Amid their racing, swirling flight, I give my performance.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen!” I pause, tilt my head, consider. I add, “And assorted corpses thereof. Lend me your ears.

“I come to praise the past, not to bury it.

“The good deeds that men do live after them;

“The ill is oft interred with their bones;

“So let it be with humans…”

I recite the lines, half something almost as old as the words themselves, half something entirely new. As the sun traces a path across the stage, I move on to other speeches from Shakespeare, and when that fails I start belting songs from musicals, in voice incapable of melody.

The words pour from me, filling the empty theater. They rest in the broken seats, tangle themselves in the trailing curtains, and rise with the bats to spill out through the holes in the roof. They wind through the debris-filled streets of a shattered city, in and out of empty houses where only walls are left standing, through parks returned to forest, along broken highways and across this entire empty, beautiful world.

And, somewhere in the impossible distance, they come to rest on the shoulders of a person, who looks up momentarily at their touch, light as a ghost and heavy as the weight of a world.