Friday, September 19, 2008

Everywhere and Nowhere

I've been dancing with strangers. They hold me close, whisper to me, smile, and I feel nothing but the respite from my thoughts that movement brings, hear nothing but the music and my breath. They look in my eyes and I find myself wondering what they see because when I look back at them all I see is you. Or your absence, but does it really matter which it is? Absent or not ours is the story I can't seem to put down--stubbornly rereading the last pages over and over again, willing there to be a different ending. So I've been dancing with strangers. Their hands are tender and coaxing their voices soft and compelling. They tell me I'm the sweetest thing they've ever seen and I think I hear the echo of your voice in theirs, I think: lies like these are far too easy to tell. I want to scream that I can't hear them, cannot see or feel them, that my reality right now is silent and empty, that their warmth cannot reach me here. I want to tell them that there is no belief left in me--only the certain knowledge that their eventual betrayal, their inevitable lies will mean less to me because I will never again allow myself to care the way I did with you. But I say none of this, only smile as they lead me out the door, thinking surely in such a large city they will take me somewhere new, somewhere where I have not been with you, somewhere where I can allow myself to be distracted, allow myself to forget for a little that with you everywhere I am nowhere.

1 comment:

Knight said...

It's the being led to new places that will help you find something better. That is the silver lining in the end of the story. There is better. You just don't know it because you haven't met it yet.