Oh yeah. This is why we play.
This is why we stay up late
and endure aching backs, cold feet, and tired eyes as we
pound the keys far into the night.
This is why we sacrifice our allowances to be terrorized by a teacher for
forty-five minutes every week and live our lives in dread of lessons.
This is why our parents scrimp and save
and fill us with guilt and gratitude
and why our siblings scream, sickened
with hearing our pieces yet again.
This is why we endure weeks of worry; why we cry
into our pillows; why we're nervous wrecks for months.
This is why we convulse with anxiety, don't eat, feel sick.
This is why we try endlessly to make friends with butterflies.
Why we sacrificed an A on that paper.
This is why we're willing to stand on shaking legs to take our first bows:
For the second bows.
The ones where the roar of the applause reaches our ears across the hall and crashes to shore
on the stage around us,
flooding through the dam of forgetfulness we've built all this time
and letting loose our feelings, no more held back, but broken loose on our faces
in radiant smiles that utterly wash away that dam
that we've built up since last time
that's kept back our joy
with tears and fear and worry and pain.
And that's when we remember that
This is why we play. Oh yeah.