VOLCADA – CAPSIZED
EVA
Allen’s buried.
Without husband, I re-experience my youth.
Oh, the bafflement of the young!
I broke off my first
Engagement because I loved too much
And cast about for a spouse I could
Control. I believe you did that, too.
EVAN
I experienced our parting as unbearable.
I had to run away –
Your rush of talk was like someone bursting into tears.
I felt like an executioner robbing you of sleep.
Without you
My nose began to bleed and
It’s been bleeding ever since.
We must love each other less to become more tranquil.
EVA
I am a witch and you should fear me.
I glow with contempt and boredom and fury.
I don’t understand why
I can’t experience life by your side.
We share the same senses,
The same vein of joy.
Our life together is timeless, continuous.
EVAN
Your letter fraught with dynamite.
I can never be alone, it is me and the gin bottle.
I am home nowhere now – except with you.
EVA
Please don’t get yourself into a state –
But Edgar has proposed, forcing me to face the fact
That I literally cannot live without you.
EVAN
I dread you will succumb to Edgar.
You called him “sweet” and “cozy” and “brilliantly entertaining”
And I am none of those things. Did you bewitch him?
I ask in my persecuted voice.
It would be your ultimate justice, sending me to hell.
We lose each other by inches.
Aren’t we doing that already?
EVA
I can’t show Edgar the brutal candor
Behind my loving kindness.
He mistakes the hostess for a person.
I arrange my flowers in symbols of you
And everyone’s too stupid to notice.
To bed alone again tonight.
I wish Elayna would die.
Then we should be equals.
EVAN
I must refuse your guilt.
I feel a shift in the angle of vision
Further from you than ever.
A foreboding so final it seemed the end.
Your pleading for our life dissolves my will.
EVA
I am gnawed by an aching hopeless wish.
Loneliness leads to breakdown,
Becomes dementia. I batter
Around the rooms of this castle,
Brightly-plumaged,
Knocking into furniture,
A tragic bird who’s trapped indoors.
Even dizzy with drink I maintain the frigidity
Of an Edwardian hostess
Intolerant of scenes at meals.
Without you life’s a half-lit room.
EVAN
I’ve become a character in your melodrama
An absurd scalawag of romantic vice.
Let’s reject this
Hopeless dilemma.
EVA
What could be more beautiful than our ten days in New York,
Among perverted architecture.
No loss of illusion there, rather an increase.
I’m in the midst of a dreary financial crisis,
Having breakdown on my feet.
I hope I don’t sound too shocked and sad.
You are life to me as nothing is.
My fingers still tremble,
Touching you after 17 years.
EVAN
This is the Eva I first met, first knew, first loved.
We waited it out and didn’t lose each other.
I was sane or mad to doubt you & myself.
We are like two people sweating blood
I dread losing you
But Elayna’s power still holds me.
One of you may do me harm.
EVA
Thanks for the cash,
I hope it doesn’t embarrass you too much.
You are a reviver and a balm.
We shall be in Paris together before we die.
EVAN
If you want me to be unselfish, let me be unselfish.
You are my greatest friend. I’m
Trying to keep off the drink while you’re here,
Otherwise I know I’ll wreck everything.
Three manhattans makes me crazy.
Your feverish cheer does not seem solid.
Is this the wreckage of our love?
Once frightened of your clinical eye
Now I’m more frightened of my own.
I’ve matriculated in
Your fearful university.
EVA
We sheer away in horror
Scenting fumes of evil
As we lose control.
Defeat and exhaustion, alarm and despondency.
Demoralized and sad.
Slam down the lid on pain and resentment:
I have taken against your family.
Let’s dance. To sit
In silence denigrates our love.
EVAN
My heart aches for you.
We talked for the first time in weeks
About hurt and resentment.
I could manage my life if it weren’t for you
And you could manage yours if it weren’t for me.
You infect me with your despair and I flee to my wife
To release the pressure.
Her quickening influence works my imagination.
EVA
I hate that you travel the world without me.
You pervade that place as God pervades our hearts.
I obsess that you’re in places where I’m not.
I could not live without seeing you. Yet
Our visit may turn sour.
EVAN
Everything except your beautiful self rusts
Or dies or goes away.
My love only seems dead;
it’s alive underneath. If you die
I shall never forgive you.
We need ideas that are less about ourselves.
EVA
My rage is based on my assumption
Of togetherness and my
Secret fear you’re being got at when
We could be so snug together.
EVAN
I hurt Elayna tonight
But there’s no help for it.
She cares for me and I only care for a life apart.
A clean break, an amputation
Makes me frantic and guilty.
She says we have a happy marriage only because
She willed it. This smell of death and decay
Makes me long for sex.
Could you help me find a girl – any girl you choose –
Or will you call me a sex mad degenerate?
Panic makes my hands shake.
I thought of Elayna and I wept.
EVA
I received your sad, wild letter.
I accept that you can’t free yourself.
Do you accept it?
I feel so very near you.
I accept that you make sex
Desperately with strangers –
Do you accept it?
Can anyone love such a cold-blooded person?
EVAN
How silly I am, I thought
I reconciled to our ending,
Expecting a collapse of tension & illusion.
But it’s a prospect I just can’t face.
Alysse Aallyn 
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