Weren’t we beautiful?
The way we used to dance and twirl, drip sweat onto the floor, push and pull each other’s arms and hands, fierce strong legs pressed down into the wood beneath our feet? Weren’t we beautiful the way we touched, just fingers, ever so lightly as the Chopin music filled the room, the morning’s buttery sun light warmed our arms and we gazed with open hearts all the way down the river of blue eyes or brown eyes meeting in the soul?
Weren’t we beautiful, the way we used to run and jump into each other’s arms, you lifting me, me wrapping my legs around you and we’d hold there, as one together for a moment, feeling the heat of one another’s bodies, the beat of each other’s hearts, hearing the breath moving through the lungs and smelling the hint of mint tea or coffee on the other’s breath.
Weren’t we beautiful in our physical forms, writhing to the music, swinging around each other, hopping, tip toeing, stomping the beats, hips swiveling, spine’s undulating? We felt the power of stomp and clap, would get lost in the reveries of song. Hearts opened with gratitude, longing, sadness, ecstasy, joy.
Weren’t we beautiful?
Those days feel like a distant cousin, a thing of the past.
Now we dance in our living rooms, share ourselves with hundreds of little squares on a screen. We stare into laptops, watch figures move and arms flail in their own little pods while we wiggle hips. The music streams from the same source, the beat is one.
But there is no heat of the other, no pulse in the heart, the loins, no sweat exchanged. Solo, alone, confined, constricted.
Now we zoom.
Dance and ZOOM.
Safe in our isolated bubbles.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to be in one collective for a moment in time, but I feel the longing to touch, to hug, to bump hips, to nestle up to my own kind, feel the heat of blood and muscles moving underneath the skin.
Underneath the skin.
I do.
It’s true.
Don’t you?