Croatoan

Rose, a young woman sitting wrapped in a sheet, barefoot, speaks the monologue Croatoan, a word carved into a tree or post of an abandoned fort on Roanoke Island.  Rose says that she is incoherent and talks of being defiled, of seduction, of intercourse being another form of murder, of desire being pointless, of every act of love being a betrayal.  She speaks of looking at old books in a shop on the wharf and going for a walk in the garden with a man she met there who may make love to her or beat her to death with his walking stick.  She says a girl carved the word into a tree and then all the settlers disappeared into the woods and nobody knows what happened or what it means.  She says it is time for us to go and the light fades and goes out.