Dance!

I only ever dance well
when I’m completely,
absolutely,
irrefutably alone.

Alone is non-negotiable.
Alone and free—
from social obligation,
from physiological distractions,
from bras.

Also,
for the magic to happen,
the music has to catch me off guard.
I mean that quite literally:
if there is even a whisper of premeditated desire to dance—
even a microscopic crumb of it
buried under other, louder needs—
I will dance like a sock.

Not a good sock.
A damp, retired sock
found under the couch
during a full moon.

Weddings, nightclubs, house parties,
concerts, baptisms, office Christmas karaoke—
makes no difference.
Drunk, sober, buzzing with joy or crushed by despair,
post-pilates or mid-cramp—
I always move like a confused garden hose
trying to become metaphorical.

But—
put me alone,
in a moment of absolute non-expectation,
say during a radio interlude
while chopping carrots—
and the right song drops—
I will deliver three, maybe four movements
of such perfect beauty
and flawless coherence
that there is no timeline,
in any possible universe,
where they do not belong together.

It’s less a dance
and more a cosmological spasm.
A ripple so precise
it alters the tides of every planet
in the solar system
for centuries to come.

In pyjamas.
Wearing bunny slippers.
Holding a slightly stained knife
that flings orange droplets in perfect sync
with the destiny of moons.
Hair up in a chopstick with a tiny owl on top.

Yes,
I sometimes catch the wave.
And when I do—
I bend or affirm
the arc of nearby galaxies.

Or stop them entirely.

And in that moment,
from the fizzing centre of my cells
to the frozen edges of interstellar space,
echoes back the unanimous monologue
of everything that is.