She danced. When she was sad, she danced. When she was excited, she danced. It was her center. From the dance she reached out into the world, only to come back to its safety.
She danced. She danced like there was no tomorrow. "But there really is no tomorrow, you silly bird", she would say. And she was right, she was always right. I would wake up the next day and it would still be today. "Maybe it's better that tomorrow never comes, because tomorrow I'll lose her," I found myself thinking.
But then she danced some more. She danced so well, the floor didn't even feel her presence. She danced so honestly, so complete, I could never fully watch her. It felt like I was desecrating a holy ritual. Whenever I watched her dance, I felt like I was a prepubescent boy looking through a keyhole at some forbidden act, I felt like the things that I saw weren't meant for a mortal's eyes.
She danced not as a form of expressing herself. No, it was more than that. When she danced, she WAS dance. It wasn't a self, performing a set of movements in a space, it was the dance itself, manifesting in front of my eyes in the only form I could understand.
And she never really stopped dancing. Not even when doing normal stuff, like reading a magazine. Her every movement was fluid, like some new, never-before seen experimental act. Her eyes danced on the pages. Her curls danced with her, like an aura surrounding an alien entity.
She felt alien to me. Not because she spoke another language and not even because she came from a place further away than even my imagination could reach. No, she was an alien to me because she could dispel all my worries with one smile. She could shine light on a darkness I thought was eternally with me. And she could do it naturally, like it was her meaning all along.
She would talk to me for hours, and her thoughts danced with mine as her words danced on the tip of her tongue. I was sipping every word that came out of her mouth like water by a poor soul stuck in the desert.
I sometimes caught myself staring at her in a crowd, at concerts. She would sometimes notice my stare before I could, and she would then stare back, without flinching. We were both like moths under a light, caught in each other's stare.
Watching her dance made me wonder if I could have been as fluent as her if I learned how to move like that at a young age. "it's never too late to start dancing", she'd say with a light smile on her face. "Oh, but it is," I'd reply, stretching my old wings in the evening breeze. "An old bird like me, dancing, would be an offense to this beautiful art".
But she was right. She always was, because her dancing always pointed her towards the truth. And the truth was that it's not about the dance, the result. It's about dancing as an action. I would never be able to jump like her, only to land like a feather back down. I wouldn't even be able to spin around without getting dizzy. But dancing would eventually free me from the cage I built myself. And I was too afraid to be free again.
My heart danced when she embraced me. She would hug me and stay there, tucked on my chest, for as long as I wanted to hold her, like she didn't need anything else. And my heart slowly began dancing to the warmth of her proximity, as if she was singing a silent tune with the right chords.
I, for a fleeting moment, was a fixed point around which the tiny dancer chose to float and twirl. She was actually a time traveler, I realized. She would always keep herself and whoever was near her in a state of "today". As soon as she danced away, tomorrow would come.
It's tomorrow now, dançarina. And you’re still on my mind.
