From Real Life to Verse: Inspirations Behind The Apothecary’s Conundrum
The backstory of the epilogue poem, and the origin of the apothecary monologue—the founding scene of the play itself.
EPILOGUE
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The Celestial Kiss
She drifts in silver silence, cool and coy,
a whisper trailing dusk across the sky.
He blazes on behind, a heart aflame,
forever chasing what he can’t hold nigh.
But now and then, when stars grow still and lush,
she pauses—just enough to let him near.
A breath, a touch, a golden blushing hush…
then gone again, she smiles and disappears.
— Rex M. Pietrobono
Michelle, a friend from my local Dunkin’, whose tattoo inspired this poem, and who kindly allowed me to share it.
A passing conversation over an unusual bottle I kept gave rise to an idea—distilled into verse—and thus began the imagined apothecary’s conundrum.
He seeketh an elixir of Eros—a bottled jewel of charm.
And in faith, among my bountiful stock lieth such a libation—nectar of the gods, distilled from dew-kissed daisies ’neath a waxing moon.
Yet in rash hands, courtship’s maze grows dim, and care for the unwary soon falters.
For all its promise, the path gleams bright at the gate . . . but the way out is lost to most.
— Act I, Scene III
The bottle that sparked the idea of potions—and, in time, the imagined apothecary who would dispense them.
