Aurora 2026

Krislyn Moreland

He put everything he had into those designs. You saw it. The late nights, the falling asleep at the design table. The blood from the pins and hand cramps from the sewing. Mariana What he did wasn’t healthy. He was suffering, and that’s probably why he died before his tim HE DIED FOR ART. FOR BEAUTY. And what do you live for? These half-baked designs? It’s 1939, not 1890! Women can no longer skulk around looking pretty and fainting on couches. You come from a well of genius. USE IT. Mariana (crying now, voice shaky) I do not know how. He left me this place and this duty, and I cannot fill his shoes. (A beat and then looking around and up with fear, still light tears) I can feel his eyes looking down upon me. The same gaze he used to use when I’d misbehave as a child. Like he can see right through me. Does he do that now? See into my very soul and not recognize his own talent within? Narrator (cuts her off and begins yelling)

silence

Mariana yelling up to the sky, gripping fistfuls of her sketches

Mariana Can you see me, Father? Are you ashamed? Can you see your fingerprints in what I create? Or look upon me as the very incarnation of disappointment?

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