December 8, 2006

...

And in my dream you danced. You had shed your preoccupations and your apprehensions. You felt so light you thought you could fly. You spun around in circles and made yourself dizzy for the first time in years. Nothing left to say and all your cares cared for, you perfectly two-stepped around the room. I saw a new elegance in the way your jeans-clad legs moved. How come your jeans never fit right but they always fit perfectly? They are never tight around your legs, making you look like a stick figure. But now you are tall and not the skinny school boy anymore.
One sublime moment, you took two fast steps forward and a slow one back, skillfully avoiding crashing into people who were not there. The sounds of the music forming new melodies in your head you moved to your own beat. In tune with the world. The world I don't know.
Your left hand lingered purposeless in mid-air next to your shoulder. Your index finger bounced once or twice to the bass and went back to rest. For once your motions not aimed at eliciting emotions. You moved to move, from deep within you impulses flashed through your body, gently removing your soles from the ground and letting them touch back down an inch farther on the dance floor.
With a joyful smile I stood at dance floor's side and watched you. Your drink in your right hand, your eyes fixed on your feet, you were conserved in time. Your gentle twists carried in them the silence of your thoughts. I felt the weight of your burden in my hands, I held it by my side like a briefcase. It never really belonged to you anyway.
When it was handed to you remains hidden in memory. Comprised by an artist's life it disconnects from banality and the vernacular. How could it not? While it pulls me down, it makes me light inside. My soul pours into the briefcase. When I hand it back to you at the end of your dance, you will leave with my essence stored away in it, to be stolen by you to use it up as you please.
Yet now your feet are still moving ever so slowly. Your brown leather shoes traveled the world while staying in place. In your head you have been to Lebanon and San Francisco, you had to believe you were actually there, and always were your leather shoes with you. The knot you tied is coming undone as your walls unfold and you are unraveled.
Do that two-step again.
Your blue woolen sweater hides your heated skin. It slips your mind to take it off. It moves and throws new wrinkles with every twist you perform. Your motion is mirrored in a fraction of the fabric. The world reflects your movement. It's a mirror you don't look into. You don't meet my eyes as I keep watching.
Rewind. Do that two-step again. Forward and back. If ever there was serenity in the world, it was in the second you floated above the ground. Gone too soon and the tape stuck in play, perpetually as the world moves ever on, I have to see you make your way to the bar and feel your briefcase strain my arm. Come and wipe the smile off my face.
"Oh, my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look at the things you made. All things shining."

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