Prose

Dance is a universal language, a form of expression and emotion, translating life into art, to convey the life of a person. This is why I want to dance forever. With it I want to feel the grace, the happiness, the empowerment. I want life flowing in each and every one of my steps, to have my movements produce music, infusing both my feelings and the audience's to produce a flawless dance sequence.

I've always danced for this dream of mine, looking for that something. Or perhaps, someone ? The connection to my audience motivates me to keep moving forward, to have us beat as one, to help me find new rhythms and frequencies.

Dance gives me a sense of connection : a link to the music, to the people around us, to our heart, soul, and mind.

I wake up each day to enter a different dance studio, and each has a viewing panel for other people to watch. A concoction of emotions always seems to surface. Some people would be happy, bursting into joy and sudden euphoria. Others would look all tensed up, especially when I do a difficult dance step. When I fall, they would always pray and hope for me to go on. They want me to keep dancing, to pick myself up, to never stop doing what I do best, to achieve great heights.

I kept watching him. This boy was a sad, lonely figure who had somehow caught my attention. As opposed to those who run around and throw tantrums, he was shrouded by a dark cloud of emotions that I could not make out clearly. He shfited his gaze occasionally to different objects hanging on the wall, but his expression never changed. He only appeared stifled, as tears rolled down his cheeks every now and then.

I decided to change the music to something much slower, so I could keep up with his situation and with my own dancing.

He turned and stared at the calendar and there was some fancy notation on today's date. It seemed as though his emotions had not other outlet but the tears that streamed down his face, before he finally let out some words, "it's ... my ... birthd...", trailing off at the end.

He finally turned to gaze through the looking glass, staring intently at me as I twisted and twirled. With every passing minute of enjoying my dance, he appeared livelier. I attempted a tour en l'air that mirrored his seemingly high spririts, but somehow, I couldn't achieve the usual height.

However, he now seemed to be in a trance, his eyes batting as his eyelids started to droop. Something felt wrong. He forced a smile, before more tears welled up in his eyes once again, and he lowered his head.

He reached for the bottle of pills next to him, swallowing a handful rapdily.

He started gasping for air, and he seemed as if he was attempting to reach for the emergency button when he jerked over and collapsed onto his bed. Abruptly, he contorted on the ground, curling up and kicking everything around him as he spun out of control, losing energy along the way.

At this point, I started jumping out of beat. After each apparent repetition, I let out a scream, fluttering and doing an exaggerated pas de chat.

Afraid, I pranced to the viewing panel to see the smile fade from his face, to see the tears dry up, as he lay next to a stream of Quaaludes. He seemed like such a nice boy, the type I would have loved to talk to and persuade to dance with.

I moved slower and slower as tears stung my eyes, making me tumble and fall over onto the ground. I lose all direction and meaning to continue moving. I lay - flat - on the ground, sobbing over a person I never knew.

It was just that one moment when we clicked, when I felt like I was a part of him.

The day I was born I was a fresh sheet, naïve, and susceptible to external forces, brought into this cold, dark, and heartless world. That day, tears were shed – unknown to be happy or sad – looking at what had been conceived. I was supposed to be a form of relief from her sad, lonely life. So there I was lying on her arms, as she stared intently at me with those red puffy eyes, asking herself whether I was really what she needed to keep herself going.

From then on, I accompanied her wherever she went: to work, to the hospital, and back home. This seemed like an endless cycle, and with each passing day I was growing little by little. I met her friends, listened to their conversations. I found out she was an altruist, and she tried her best to help everyone, even outside of her own capabilities. During the course of which she helped me find new friends, afraid that I too would be like her, growing up all sad and lonely.

I still remember how I waited with her on the countless dates that she arranged, waiting for the person to turn up, before tactfully taking my leave. She didn’t want to let her partner know about me just yet. But when they did, they left more hurriedly than when they first laid eyes on her jolie visage. And so, I took full blame, she lashed out at me, screamed and called both us unsightly and disgusting, and flung the mirror against the cold hard ground. Taking each piece and mirrored copies of me, and in each shattered glass shard, she saw herself and her heart – both equally fragmented.

I hid behind pieces of fabric when her parents came over to visit. It was a weekly thing, to make sure she was still sane, healthy, and coping. Curiosity always got the better of me, and I’d try to peek out from behind the covers, but she was always quicker than me. She’d rapidly pull down the covers, or hide me with a scarf that she donned ever since the day I was born. But that one day when her parents had a surprise visit, they saw me. I still remember how her father struck her, and that crack of the skin-on-skin contact that sent vibrations of pain tremoring through her nerves. But still she held it in. I remember how he squeezed me so tightly by the sides she was trying so hard not to shout. I still remember how she swallowed the pain and all I could do was cry.

As the days went by, the things she fed me with went from bad to worse, as she gave me the things she didn’t like, so she wouldn’t need to take them in herself. I felt like my mouth was forcefully opened to accept them, that every single meal left me tearing.

Every night since everyone deserted her, she would tell me about how her day went, sometimes about how she tried to send a text message to her best friend – the only ever one that talks to her occasionally – and how she would just… trail off midway, just staring at the interface as she watched that single tick against a last sent chat from two weeks ago. If not, she would be taking off her masks one by one and putting them back inside her heart, telling me never to grow up to be like her, that what I am should explain who I really was. Then she’d tuck me in and tell me to rest, thank me for listening to her ramble on and on, and she’d lie next to me, patting on until even she fell asleep.

The nights are clear, but they were suffused with sloth and sullen expectations, something I woke up each day to realise.

She was a happy person, kind, innocent, and oblivious to the world around her. She thought that the world was perfect, that she could help everyone whenever possible. She refused to believe that anyone had ulterior motives. She was always there when anyone needed help. But when she was the one who needed help the most, the path was clear and desolate. Even her parents couldn’t face the reality that their daughter had produced such a thing. She tried so many times to be rid of me, but the scars were too deep, and she found herself making more and more, especially after drowning herself bottle after bottle. She realised that I was the only one who stayed on permanently, that stayed by her whenever she needed help.

Yet today, she still looks like that same happy person, carefree, and ambitious in her goals. But on days when she couldn’t keep up the act, and became silent and withdrawn, she wished she had the courage to say that she was definitely not fine. She wished she had the strength to counter that suffocation that left her fighting back not only tears but words, left trapped between the passage from her heart to her brain and back, that could've expressed herself. That whatever came out was simply a sigh that didn't mean anything but apparently meant "I'm fine" and "I'm really OK, I really have no problems" but it was just mere autocorrect that filled in the spaces when she deleted the words that could’ve been sent out of her mouth.

That night she lay in bed, with me right beside her, covering me up with plasters that we had used as blankets, and tried to cry herself to sleep. Today she had no words, she just hoped the tears would stop the agony, mitigate the suffering, alleviate the pain. She was tired of how someone had to pluck off the covers, and take pleasure in the blood fondue that oozed out, savouring that thick solid precipitation served with a glass of tears.

Still, she wished “If everyone I loved dearly lived happily for the rest of eternity, that would be the greatest thing I would be able to do.” And yes, she loved herself dearly. That night she picked up the last bottle hanging on the wall, felt the alcohol rush and burn through her oesophagus as she gulped down the liquid. She held the now empty bottle against the moonlight and smashed it against the side of the bed. And so, she let her blood, sweat, and tears ooze out like dark secrets, until they were all drained, and I was all dried up.

And so, she lay there, her final breath turned air, and so were you, sticking cold and hard against her skin.