Recall the dance you were just now in the middle of

before turning away. At least remember how each

thing took its place in the air – the skirt
of swinging knives, plungepools of necks,

how the lengths of music, unraveled from the piano,

require one to lean in and listen close, require one
to stamp out measures of it, catch it squirming

underfoot. Soon between the two of you

there’s just the dance, like a striking
window you forget to look through.

And the music, made by movement, taken apart

in the ear and re-pieced, knuckled and trampled,
loses the sounds of itself in repetition

of itself, in segment and multiple. Soon between

the one and one of you there is always
the dance, a gowned force above the squamous floor.

And the music, which possesses no movement,

which is your movement through time remembering
the differences between moments – beat and

off-beat – becomes a nothing in the ballroom

of this and this other somebody’s head. At least
recall that what you have just seen is not

what you see, heard not hear,

there on the island of acoustic and awkward pose,
where the scaled sea has frozen but too thin

to cross, where the dance is a door forever,

is a wall to hold you here forever. Now turn.