FATIGUE

I say I like to dance. What I mean is I like movement without commitment.

I do not learn the steps. I do not arrive with a partner. I come alone, enter the middle, become momentum.

I borrow hands. Spin strangers. Laugh with someone else’s someone.

I am electric for a night and untraceable by morning.

I do not wait for slow songs. They ask too much. They assume direction. In the centre, no one asks where I am headed. Only whether I am alive.

I dance hard enough to avoid standing still. I dance loud enough to drown the question that follows me home.

I call it freedom. It might just be practice at leaving before anyone can ask me to stay.