Free Write, Week 7

Improv: “The Best Slow Dancer” by David Wagner

Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper
By the second string of teachers and wallflowers
In the school gym across the key through the glitter
Of mirrored light three-second rule forever
Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer
Who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn’t there
In your arms like music she knew just how to answer
The question mark of your spine your hand in hers
The other touching that place between her shoulders
Trembling your countless feet light-footed sure
To move as they wished wherever you might stagger
Without her she turned in time she knew where you were
In time she turned her body into yours
As you moved from thigh to secrets to breast yet never
Where you would be for all time never closer
Than your cheek against her temple her ear just under
Your lips that tried all evening long to tell her
You weren’t the worst one not the boy whose mother
Had taught him to count to murmur over and over
One slide two slide three slide now no longer
The one in the hallway after class the scuffler
The double clubfoot gawker the mouth breather
With the wrong haircut who would never kiss her
But see her dancing off with someone or other
Older more clever smoother dreamier
Not waving a sister somebody else’s partner
Lover while you went floating home through the air
To lie down lighter than air in a moonlit shimmer
Alone to whisper yourself to sleep remember.

Revision:

She always moved through the kitchen as if she danced
a slow dance, a slight flick of the wrist to wipe down
the marble table with cigarette in hand. The pots and pans
hung as suspended as her belated gate, not so much
of a time in the 50s where gin and tonic would have clung
to her breathe. No. She always knew how to answer the call
of the written word each night, another dance all together
as she never saw the eyes within the yellow wallpaper
or the shadow of a woman shaking the cell bars outside
her windowsill. Her bated breath waited still for a time
held in the photograph. She was nine then as her mother
held her with a crooked smile. What figure stood there,
so melancholy still, who did not know that she was the best
slow dancer who danced alone to whisper herself to sleep and remember.