Two Swans,  a 25-minute short film of spoken word and music. Accompanied by Diego Picó Mora, Chicago, IL, 2022

The poetry of Two Swans is an alphabet laid like bricks. A story as strong as stone. A house built with words that is a home for the wounded.

Slow Dancing Over a Black Hole

A Love Ballad

Written by Sophia Stopper 

Oct 18, 2025


I remember standing at a bus stop in the rainy Chicago Autumn telling a stranger a story that resembled you. Never about you directly. Always finding a way to circumnavigate you. Never landing on your surfaces. Too shy to admit how I feel. To myself, let alone anyone else.

The very first thing I wanted to say to you gets lost in the shuffle these days. I remember you at the beginning. The strong silent type. We did talk, but it was minimal compared to the orbiting. You made tiny cities out of clay and I pugged as the radio would hum my music. There was so much left unsaid in the hug we last shared where I went to let go and you just held me tighter. This haunts me until today. I simply want to tell you, my dear–you’re cute. I like you. I love you, even.

The I love yous flow from me to you now that I’ve swung the door wide open for them. I’ve loved so many people in my life, but not like you. Not this untouchable kind of cherishing. This kind of thunder in my chest when I think of you knowing there is lighting cutting across my irises when I talk about you. And I want you to know it. I need you to know how I feel about you. No regrets. No shame. Just an I love you floating between us. Heard? I hope. I have my fingers crossed you’re still listening.

There was attraction and repulsion at the origin. I remember we used to have little playful arguments. After one, I thought my crush on you was gone because I took what you said too personally. I didn’t laugh as easy as I do these days. But then later that day, my friend told me you said that I’m good at flirting. Okay, I fell back into it when I heard that compliment. I sure did want you, and I thought–I think he wants me too?

I love Io (the moon). We are kindred Io and I. I’m writing a book about every moon in our solar system. Researching their names, finding their stories. Io sticks out to me from the rest. It’s not because of her story, but because of the elegant simplicity of the name Io. One page poems. There are around 300 moons in our local solar system, but Io stood out to me. I’ve seen Io up close because of you. Because of you I see the word Io and I shimmer. Because of you I see you use the word Io and my eyes dilate.

S + A or in other words me plus my new language, no? I’m so confident in us that there are no other options I can think of. (Even though I understand you are a whole world and it could mean anything) I know you never lost that inkling of love between us. Neither did I. Now what are we supposed to do?

This is it. The first time in my life that I’m honestly admitting my feelings towards you to myself and to others. And it feels so meaningful. Finally–let it out, kid. You can do it. It’s just been hard. The rejection. The humiliation. The healing. It’s taken this long. But my dear, lo, I love you. And I always have. And I always will.

Do you remember that time I crashed your class and corrected the teacher? Well, it was Bruce Naumen’s Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square. And I couldn’t take someone crediting his work to someone else. Were you impressed by me? I could feel your presence in the room and, alright, I was showing off for you, babe. Do you like my big brain? Because I can tell you for sure, that I adore yours. Every time I come back to you and your work, I learn something new. New references to look up. Stories I hadn’t heard before brought to my attention. Sometimes within my own mythology. And it’s a bright light to see your art expressing such deep-rooted concepts. Ones that make my head spin. I am endlessly interested in you. If I just say it plainly–that’s what I would say.

Do you believe me when I say I love you? When I dangle my heart in front of your face and say, Hey, this is for you. Or do I have to think of some uber creative way to say you’re a wonder of the world to someone who’s lived on four continents. People always ask me how many countries I’ve been to and in all honesty, I’ve never kept count. I was more living than counting. Except for the minutes, okay, well, the years I spent away from you. I did count those. One year. Year two. Year four. Year six. Now we’re going on twelve years since we last saw each other. And you can still find me carving your name into my own beating heart.

When I say, I love you, I mean it like a comet to the earth’s surface. We’d start over together, over and over, and yet still, we’d survive. There will be poetry. Art. Storytelling. Always. Between us.


You were the one whose scent engaged my neural system. The system that makes my heart skip a beat every time I hear the sound of your voice. Does your heart skip when you hear me laugh. Do you listen to the recordings I send you. Do you even remember what my voice sounds like?

I want to talk to you about how in heaven, everyone is equal in God’s eyes. And, no, I’m not religious, but I like to believe we’re some type of energy that continues on into the afterlife. The type of energy that can slow dance over the Milky Way and laugh at the black hole at the center of our galaxy for it could never contain us. Not us. Not you and me, my love. We may never talk again in this life. Maybe we’re not meant to. It’s so complicated, but I always like to remember we’re just two people. People fall in love every day. Why does ours have to be so tragic? Either way, I know we were bonded in lives before this, and we’re meant to twist and dip with the stars and their exoplanets in the life after this. I am so sure about you. You being a momentous person in my life. One that affects my subconscious, one I cannot just suppress away. One that is always an undercurrent and sometimes a tidal wave.



I listen to Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You and I am endlessly enveloped in you. I found it on a playlist called Love Ballads. Because I need to belt this out. This is the first time in my life I’m seeing these connections in yours and my work and letting myself play with them. Are you following me through this whole thought journey? This slightly obsessive, incredibly desperate in the most humble and earnest of ways kinda bellowing. From the mountains of Pennsylvania, I declare my love for you. And this, my dear, is a hill I will die on.