The Dance

Slowly, she starts the dance. Just a little bit... the wave of a hand, the brush of a silver slippered foot on the floor.

You only know it as a memory, not having actually witnessed it.  A glint across a lamp lit window, but when you look, nothing.

A whisper, the hair on the back of your neck standing up, but nothing concrete.

Time passes, she grows more confident. The tempo increases just a bit. Just enough.  She dances again, moving further across the floor than the last time.  Wider her reach, she moves both arms, up and down side to side.  Her feet sweep the floor, leaving a trail like shattered glass in her wake.

She’s angry. The only way she can express it is through the dance. The dance is all she knows, the dance is all she has. All things through the dance.  The tempo is insane, cannot be defined. She twirls, hands splayed above her head, like a desperate reach for the last fruit on the tree. Her feet are a blur.  She moves so intensely that she actually stops traffic.  Everything else stops while she rages.   Some say it’s beautiful, those who have the time to watch from afar and not be affected directly.  Others are angry that she is angry. Others still are somewhere in between.  All have to deal with the aftermath, regardless.

She rages on and on, the dance reaches a  frenzy.  No one remembers what came before. The grace, the lace, the simplicity.  There is only this.  Always bringing the darkness, always burying whatever we had previously seen.

She’s starting to calm as she ages.  Still, she dances, but the steps become slower, they even falter a bit.  Her arms have grown tired, her hands droop mostly at her sides.  The once silver slippers have become a murky grey.  It’s still twilight, but every now and then she rests and one can see there may still be light.

She knows that the dance must end.  She holds on, keeps shuffling her feet, trying to postpone the inevitable.  The music, knowing that she will not go quietly, starts to change on its own.  There are horns, then a flute.  There is a change.  Slight, only she notices it at first.

She gathers herself.  The slippers come off, they can only ever last so long.  She pulls up her hair and moves toward the doors.  She looks back once, then again.  Will she be missed? Not this time, not just yet.  She walks through the door.

As the rest of us welcome the Spring.