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LAVINIA

Tonight will be the last night I sing.

The last night I get to share my voice with the world.

The last night the world gets to hear my voice.

I’m going to miss this.

Standing on a stage and pouring out my emotions to an audience that watches in silent awe.

The crowded bar is unusually quiet tonight as I sing the wistful hymn of my home country that my mother used to sing to me.

I think it’s because they sense the unspoken—that I’m saying goodbye.

In that potent act, I’m also reminiscing every wonderful and horrible memory.

The love and loss of my mother and sister.

The hope my voice gave me, and the loss of innocence it caused.

I sing for the ugly marks on my body that are constant reminders of the hell I went through when thinking luck had finally smiled upon me.

But luck had nothing to do with the charming man who promised to take me away from these dingy bars and present me to the world.

His smile was a hoax.

A demon in disguise, luring in its prey.

He would have shown me fame and fortune if I had stayed with him.

Of that I am sure.

But the price was too high.

Luck turned out to be a sick sadist with a knife who loved to cut into flesh.

He crushed my hope and took me from my home country.

A land corrupted and ugly, yet beautiful and magnificent in its own right.

A place that offered my mother refuge when she fled from my father—the man who had offered her fields of gold.

A man who came from the same country as the devil that lured me in.

The irony.

Now I’m stuck here in Romania, without a penny to my name, unable to go home.

I’m stuck wandering from one decrepit town to another, singing in these dingy bars, having lost everything I once held dear.

Everything except my voice and my face, which were too valuable for him to mar.

No one wants to see an ugly woman sing, he always said.

So he kept the ugliness restricted to places only he could see.

And me.

I see the ugliness each and every day.

The scars covering my body.

Red slices from where his knife broke my skin.

Round burns from where he stubbed out his cigarettes.

A tear spills from my eye, and I realize the crowd has collectively lost its breath.

I nearly lose my own.

Because luck has finally turned my way.

It has given me the exact end I wanted.

My eyes fall shut as I sing the last word.

The last note I will ever sing.

The room is dead still as the sound fades.

No one moves; no one breathes.

Not even me.

The air buzzes with the intensity of emotion I’ve just instilled in each and every one of the men who has been listening attentively for the past hour.

This is a gift.

Your ability to evoke such profound emotion, my mother used to say.

Her words have never felt more true.

I feel more connected to myself and the world around me, knowing I have left a piece of beauty among the barren brutality that pervades everywhere I go.

I have given these people a glimpse of that hope I have always felt but have finally given up on.

I want to apologize for not giving them more of it.

I want to promise to return.

But I can’t do that.

I have to leave, just like the hope left me.