The Shape of Change

In this monologue for teen boys from the play, “The Shape of Change”, Leo pieces things together about people vs. patterns in nature.

LEO: People always want me to explain how I feel. Like I can just translate it into words, like a scientist explaining a reaction in a lab. But feelings don’t follow formulas. They don’t have symmetry or logic. They just… happen. Like the wind, like waves, like the way birds scatter when something startles them. You can predict some of it—wind moves from high pressure to low pressure, waves break when they reach shallow water, birds follow migration routes—but there’s always a moment, a split second, where you don’t know exactly what they’ll do next. That’s how feelings are. And I don’t like that.

I like patterns in nature. Fibonacci spirals in pinecones. The way a sunflower follows the sun, always turning toward the light. How bees build hexagons, not circles or squares, because hexagons are the most efficient shape. It makes sense. It’s dependable. You can look at a leaf and see its veins branching out in perfect symmetry. You can measure the time between ocean waves and see how the tide moves like clockwork. There is order. There is predictability.

But people? People are messy. They change their minds. They say one thing and mean another. They make promises they don’t keep.

One day someone smiles at you like you’re the best thing in the world, and the next they walk past you like you’re invisible. No warning. No explanation. Just gone.

And there’s no equation to solve it. No perfect ratio. No sequence to follow.

And that’s the part I can’t understand. If nature—the entire universe—can follow patterns, then why can’t people? Why can’t they just stay the same? Why do they shift like clouds, disappear like shadows, break like waves? I try to look for the pattern in it. I try to find the rule, the common thread, the thing that makes it all make sense. But there isn’t one.

And I think… I think that’s what makes it hurt the most. Not just that people change, but that they do it without warning. Without reason. Without letting you know if they’ll ever come back.

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