missing from three houses by dave malloy

SADIE
making profiles was fun—
all these idealized avatar versions of myself.
but man, when it came to actually messaging with people
i was a disaster.

my sense of humor was gone,
my style, spark, and spunk.
because i realized that now
my entire sense of humor
was based on life with jasmine.

so when i tried to make a joke,
i would realize that that joke
was a joke i’d had with jasmine,
and so i would feel a fraud.

like i was betraying our secret language.

SUSAN & BECKETT (alternating syllables)
sometimes it feels like half of me is mis-sing.
sometimes it feels like half of me is gone.

SADIE
there were emojis i couldn’t use anymore.
devil, gekko, winkface…
i tried getting into the new ones—
leopard, sunflower, squid—
but fuck the old ones were still the best ones, you know?

SUSAN & BECKETT
sometimes it feels like half of me is mis-sing.
sometimes it feels like half of me is gone.

SADIE
times
feels
half
me
miss

times
feels
half
me
gone

so that’s an example of the kind of thing
i learned you shouldn’t say while messaging someone on a dating app.

• Experimental
• theatre
• New York