My wife loves to dance.
Her soul dances like a kite on a bright summers day, leaping and twirling through an endless crystal blue sky. Her world is a never-ending waltz through a shimmering ballroom, just her spinning through the music and the movement. When she lays next to me I can hear her heart, tapping out its gentle, undeniably musical beat.
There was a time when her whole body danced too. There was a time when she was as light and carefree as the air in her lungs. A time when her thin hips twisted along with every rhythm, when she spent hours flying gracefully about on her pointes. The time of her life. And the time of my own.
I remember her, the first day we met. She was so young. It was as though she grabbed me by the hands, pulling me into the exhilarating dance of her life. It didn't cross my mind to hold on to something. I wouldn't have looked back, not even if I could. Because looking back means slowing down, at that was the last thing either of us wanted to do. All I wanted was her, the heat of my hands on her body and the music thrumming like a drug through my veins.
But now that I can't have her, sometimes I long for what my life used to be. I try to look back, but it's just too far away. I want to speak to my family, but I don't know who they are anymore. Some days, I don't know if they ever existed. I don't know if anything existed before I met Chloe, or if it was all a daydream. It could all have been a fancy, imagined, in the beat before the music starts.
I still dance with her. I hold her and close my eyes, I let my soul dance alongside hers. Not a sad dance, I don't want her to be sad. An uplifting dance, a graceful one, the way our bodies used to dance. Sometimes she smiles and she knows that I remember her as she was, young and beautiful and entrancing, dancing a dance so joyful that sorrow never touched her, never even looked our way. Until now. I remember her smile, her laughter, the exhilaration that accompanied her very presence. I honour her music, I honour her dance.
My wife loved to dance.
