It's Still Life

Csárdás (as body-memory)

The first stroke of the bow
is not music;
it is touch.
A slow drag,
a finger tracing the spine
of the room.

The sound is dark,
sultry with sorrow,
the colour of bruised wine
and old heat.

People close their eyes.
Some wounds open.
Some hips stir.

Then the rhythm snaps!
God, it snaps,
and the body answers
before the mind can.

Heels strike the wood
in a pulse older than thought.
Skirts lash the air,
red, black, wild,
like sparks shaken
from some forbidden fire.

Breath tangles with breath.
Sweat beads.
Someone gasps,
not from pain.

This is the dance
you don’t perform.
You surrender to it.

A feral prayer
flung upward:
If sorrow lives in my bones,
then let my bones burn for it.

The fiddle moans
and laughs
in the same wicked breath
a lover who knows
exactly where to press,
exactly how to undo you
note by trembling note.

And when the final chord hits,
you are not who you were.
You are who the dance
remade you into.
All heat.
All pulse.
All living.