I spent a lifetime hiding from her.
Like her fingertips were a mystic smoke that would disappear me
to a frantic, unknown place.
I made the mistake of making eye contact with her
and she pressed the bottom of her shoe to mine.
We stayed like that unbroken
for an ineffable minute.
Swaying in a solemn two-step.
Knowing, very quietly wanting.
She pressed her body through the jagged rubber of her shoe
with a coy desperation.
And I still had a room of strangers to guffaw with some inane mundane.
My heart pounding up to my neck.
My head swimming in urgent horizons
of unknown places, I had only dared
beg to be.