Thu, 19 May 2005

face down
The dance, properly done, will hobble the dancer, shatter the ankles and warp the knees, good for nothing but to sit at the cafe and tell stories of former glories for the price of the bar’s cheapest beer. Just to say the name in certain circles will lead to a flurry of crosses and curses and spitting at the feet. Every dancer the town has bred gets sick in the head for this dance, to perfect the step and find the escape, or else never bother with an exit plan, content to throw it all away for a moment’s perfection. The streetcorners will hum for days ahead of time in anticipation of the next to try, each night a contest where the tables are pulled to the walls and the schoolkids twitch through new variations on classics so worn the floor is grooved with the steps, which only the drunks and grandparents show to watch, but on nights when the last dance is attempted the whole town closes in on the cafe, fresh-hung electric lights in the trees and women covered in children selling iced alcohols in the hollowed rinds of fruit. The lesser talents go first, as it is everywhere on this earth, until just before midnight, and the two find each other from across the street in a serpentine slither practiced into habit. It is slow at the start, and the crowd starts to guess that tonight is in fact not the night, that last-minute changes had been made to the plan, but then coy hints at the final dance appear, a twist of the arm here, an instep there, and quick enough that no one ever sees the exact moment of inception the final dance begins, time slows, all the pushing and yawning and drinking stops, everyone in the exact right spot to see what is taking place, and the beauty of it lasts just long enough to taste in the air before the scene is split with muscle tearing from bone. The dancers struggle not to scream as they fall to the floor, the crowd keeping a distance, the fall being as important as the dance. It is all one motion, a completion of a cycle, and the dancers do all they can to keep composure until the stage is struck and the last of the song vanishes from the air, now grown cold across the sweat of the skin, the light all bright from the pain, face down.
(12:23.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #