I would like for you, please, to tell me a story--something true and good...
I've allowed myself to get entirely too caught up in someone I knew better than to allow myself to get caught up in and I'm muddled.
"Oooh dear" you said, and told me a story about the rain and, i think, want.

The next bit went like this...

Always, Jack, you have the best stories.
Maybe I never told you that, but you do.

(how odd that i typed out your name.
i generally don't care to address
anyone by name until i've
touched them.)

and you said this...

"Right, like you haven't touched me."

M onths ago, you asked me a question:

I...
Can you teach me to dance?

I would have to say yes.

this is it. this is dancing, these words.

Then I can teach you to sing.

hm--you most likely could not.
but you could let me hear you sing.

you inspire me to sing, i want you to know,
but the words catch in my throat. lost.

You've heard me sing.

I haven't.
(Have I?)

Depends on your definitions.

That was a most fair win on your part.

*smile*

I was raised to view my body merely as a vessel for carrying my thoughts around in. Dancing seems...
unnatural. I think I'd like to change that.

(me: odd how sadness causes so many body systems to become upset
you: so does joy)

+

I t's my turn to offer insight:

should you begin without me,
my first advice is to dance with your eyes closed.

your question deserved an answer.
this is only the beginning of one...

It was raining when we left the subway station, or maybe snowing. Wet. Whatever it was, it was coming down in sheets (drifts?) and slicking the sidewalk. It was cold, I remember that, because I can still see the way my breath fogged and drifted when I close my eyes. Or maybe it was the clouds drifting low, or maybe the steam coming up through the grates in the sidewalk. Maybe my breath was fogging my glasses and giving everything a softer edge.

I was cold, my fingers frozen together with ice and stiff, my coat pockets providing nowhere near enough warmth to return them to life. She was cold too, but stalwart. Impenetrable, even by her standards. Or maybe that's not true, either. Maybe she was dancing in the snow (I think it was snow, now - something about that meandering quality that rain just can't pull off and rain doesn't look right for this scene) and dodging to keep the flakes off of her eyelids.

We slid down the street like figure skaters tethered together by our mutual momentum. Sometimes we held hands. That's wrong - we linked arms, could keep our hands in our pockets that way, and weaved our way from storefront to storefront, basking in the cheery glow of shoplight. Or maybe I saw that in a movie somewhere and borrowed it - throw in a cheery Christmas-themed soundtrack, jingling bells and crackling fires and all that and it could be a montage between moments of actual plot. Real people don't do things like this and anyway it was February, long removed from ornaments and ribbons. Damn, but it felt like Christmas.

We wandered, got lost, found a little tearoom and conquered its huge, tattered, red velvet sofa. We thawed and drank and laughed at the portrait of Elvis on black velvet hanging above the counter before trudging back out to find our way home. Or maybe that was a different day altogether, a different day in a different town with a different girl.

It's frustrating that I don't have a clearer picture of this, all these scenes jumbling together like slips of paper in a fishbowl. Reach in and draw one out, then another and another. Throw in some linking words and there you have it, a year out of time - a relationship. A childhood. A life. An epiphanic moment that never actually happened outside of my own head. 'And this is when I learned that...' but I didn't learn anything. It's like inventing morality tales for your kids so they don't come out as twisted as you did, or at least twisted in their own way.

Anyway. I was happy then. Or maybe not. I can't remember.

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