tourist

Our bodies are carved from electricity and the heat in the air and the scent of your neck and the light yet firm touch of your fingertips, chest against mine, multicolored dots from string lights softly glowing color out from the dark. Everything spins stationary, every slightest movement from you a language I know and whisper back in my own.

Then the song ends.

"Thank you for the dance," we both say with customary strangers' smiles.

I dance the waltz a with a different partner and the same feeling happens. I walk away, made of vibrations and feeling a little bit high, and wondering, was this really what this was like? I haven't gone out two-stepping since ✨the accident✨ six months ago. Having such intimate physical touch with a man is intense and kind of overwhelming.

And really, really, cool. It's like, how do I even describe it? It's like, talking to someone's soul a just a teeny bit. It's like the entire room disappears and even though the dance floor is really crowded tonight, I am so focused on remembering how to do this, on not stumbling, that I'm intensely concentrated on my partner and everyone else just ceases to exist and it's just us and our skin touching and the string lights glowing. I can't tell you what song is playing. I can only tell you the how soft his shirt feels and the lines of his jaw and how safe I feel in his arms and his charming quirk when he spins and how it's been so long that it feels like magic when he motions something and I just know what he means and at the same time we do the same move and it just flows. It's like when we dance we have the power to make the air sparkle.

And for him, it's just a regular Wednesday. But for me, this is alchemy.

Time to head out. Most regulars haven't even arrived yet, while I'm walking out the door. But these days I sleep early in order to work on secret things at secret hours, things more important than alchemy, with weight more heavy on my soul than gold. A year ago, I would be out past midnight, easy. Today, I'm gone at 9pm.

The drive home hurts. I miss my dance girlfriends. I miss my regular partners. I miss the feeling of collaborating with people. I miss the high and the novelty and the uncertainty and the rush.

But now I'm just a tourist here.