Dancing with Andre

Dancing with Andre

There is a way my body leans into yours

and a way your body leans back, expecting it.

When you begin the counter circle, I follow

because I have always followed, and when I stop

you come closer, your long legs nearly wrapping

themselves around my thighs, both of us bent and stooped,

lost in some ritual only we can name.

Tonight, there is only you, pulling me with your groove.

When I pause, you dance by yourself.

I trail my finger down your spine when I return,

and you pivot towards me as if I never left,

as if this dance was not interrupted for a hundred centuries

when dancing circles around and for each other

was what we did to stay alive.

Since Thanksgiving, I have avoided your eyes.

There is only one story in them and it is you and me,

a whip around your neck, your struggle to stay in the water,

me touching every part of you, mending what they broke,

re-growing what they cut away, loving what remained.

But tonight, I want to look up, once, and see this self

so long forgotten it has taken two languages and two continents to emerge.

We dance hours, allowing ourselves to barely touch.

Our pelvises sway respectfully forward, side to side,

down to the floor till we are kneeling.

You let me control the way sound moves through us.

I let you hear the notes between the notes.

I shift when you shift, smiling, because it is the only thing to do.

I know this and I know this is how it has always been.

Tonight, my body tells me what my heart will deny.

We are alone on the sava

nah, in the swamp, in the woods.

Trees rub their branches together, their trunks open to be played,

the river runs faster, the wind chants long and deep.

This is the time before drums, this is the time before

we knew how long this song would last.

2003, M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde