Dance
On scarred green corduroy couches, lined with age, sighing under my weight-
Like bearded old men, releasing ages of wearied wisdom,
Slipping in their sleep-
In rooms wreathed in smoke, wafting between breaths of laughter and exhale
And somehow beautiful, electricity in the music that shallows me out
And haunts.
I see the wooden floor, again, as you lead me, my feet moving to their own beat
Pound, pound, my heart and my shoes,
Do I know what’s happening?
And the rhythm I have is my own, but you don’t mind. Two hands grasp mine, warm with
sweat
Restraining, I have no escape, I breathe but I don’t know how.
Can I meet your eyes?
Two black holes, a vortex, pulling me into the tornado and the storm,
And the calmness in the middle, intense as it sparkles and shimmers in clarity,
Fading out cat-calls and undertones of despair.
Fading me into you, dissolving me through layers of dermis and epidermis
soaking silently through cotton and fear
A puddle on your now-closed eyelids, wrinkly in determination
smoothing out in waves of hope.
And then –you’re here, I feel
Shaky confusion, slippery thrill, wet and winsome glory
Searching, and finding -so I thought-
And sudden twists and turns
Do you know where you’re going?
And then I feel it, the smile, maybe you won’t
It grows inside of me and gives birth, to a tiny laugh
In high falsetto, notes dancing across a page
Barred inside snow-white fields, but exploding with mirthful mischief just the same.
So am I, and you may imprison me,
But I sing “in my chains like the sea”.*
*from Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”
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