I feel his arm
Lightly
Over me.
He takes one of my outstretched hands.
Draws it beneath my stomach.

"One more time..."

This is not sex,
Not friendship.
Something
Strange
Special
In the stillness of his breath,
The waterlike way he moves.

He is making a dance.
We are making a dance.

It is strange to hear my words
Read back to me.

I don't think I wrote them
To have them ever leave the page.

I think I only write
What happens across my brain
When my feet are too weary
To dance anymore.

I play the music of Steven
for Steven;
ragged, helpless,
it owns me, enveloping me
with an incomprehensible love -

Maybe he, like me,
is engaged in the kind of unspoken rebellion
you don't want to perform too brightly
since you're never certain
anyone in your family will notice
your darkened eyes, skeleton shoes, tousled hair,
patchy attendance record.
You may be sacrificing body and soul
on a ghostly battlefield, fighting across a divide
seen by no one
but you.

Para bailar, hay que merecerlo. Bailar sobre un escenario y delante de público constituye la mayor de las felicidades. A decir verdad, incluso sin público, incluso sin escenario, bailar es el colmo de la embriaguez. Una alegría tan profunda justifica los sacrificios más crueles. La educación que os damos aquí tiende a presentar la danza como lo que es: no un medio sino una recompensa.

Real men don't lift weights, they lift women.