When I dance

it all falls away—the web of bruises that I wear on the inside, the lacerations of my own self-doubt, the stutter and stall of anxiety.  I'm just there, at the studio, working with John on the tango's speed and pop, watching Kyle and Moira weave elegantly by, throwing my arms around Miss Cristina. Dance is the hardest, most frustrating, and most happy thing that I do, and even if I slide past my stops, even if I lose the pelvic angle, even if rise where I'm to have fallen, I am moving, and therefore alive—outside the reach of harm, ignorant (for a spell) of anything unright, everything cruel.