Slow Dance by Tim Seibles

Slow Dance

by Tim Seibles

Some days I can go nearly an hour

without thinking of the taste

of your mouth. Right now, I’m at school

watching teenagers fidget through a test.

Outside, the sky is smoky and streets are wet

and two grackles step lightly in yellow grass.

Two weeks ago in Atlantic City

I stood on the boardwalk

and looked out across the water –

the railing was cool, broken shells

dappled the beach – I had been

playing the slot machines

and lost all but a dollar. I

tried to picture you in Paris,

learning the sound of your new country

where, at that moment, it was already night.

I thought maybe you’d be out

walking with the street lights

glossing your lips, with your eyes

deep as this field of water.

Maybe someone was looking at you

as you paused under the awning

of a bakery where the smell

of newly risen bread buttered the air.

I remember those suede boots

you wore to the party last December,

your clipped hair, your long arms

like the necks of swans. I remember

how seeing the shape of your mouth

that first time, I kept staring

until my blood turned to rain.

Some things take root

in the brain and just don’t

let go. We went to

a movie once – I think

it was “The Dead” – and

near the end a woman

told a story about a boy

who used to sing: how, at 17,

she loved him, how that

same year he died. She

remembered late one night

looking out to the garden

and he was there calling her

with only the slow sound

in his eyes.

Missing someone is like hearing

a name sung quietly from somewhere

behind you. Even after you know

no one is there, you keep looking back

until on a silver afternoon like this

you find yourself breathing just enough

to make a small dent in the air.

Just now a student, an ivory-colored girl

whose nose crinkles when she laughs, asked me

if she could “go to the bathroom,”

and suddenly I knew I was old enough

to never ask that question again.

When I look back across my life,

I always see the schoolyard –

monkey-bars, gray asphalt, and one huge tree –

where I played the summer days into rags.

I didn’t love anybody yet, except maybe

my parents who I loved mainly when they

left me alone. I used to have wet dreams

about a girl named Diane. She was a little

older than me. I wanted to kiss her so bad

that just walking pst her house

I would trip over nothing but the chance

that she’d be on the porch. Sometimes

she’d wear these cut-off jeans, and

a scar shaped like an acorn shone

above her knee. In some dreams I would

barely touch it, then explode. Once

in real life, at a party on Sharpnack Street

I asked her to dance a slow one with me.

The Delfonics were singing I’ll never

hear the bells and, scared nearly blind,

I pulled her into the sleepy rhythm

where my body tried to explain.

But half-a-minute deep into the song

she broke my nervous grip and walked away –

she could tell I didn’t know

what to do with my feet. I wonder

where she is now, and all those people

who saw me standing there

with the music filling my hands.

Woman, I miss you, and some afternoons

it’s all right. I think of that lemon drink

you used to make and the stories –

about your grandmother, about the bees

that covered your house in Africa, the nights

of gunfire, and the massing of giant frogs

in the rain. I think about the first time

I put my arm around your shoulder. I think

of couscous and white tuna, that one lamp

blinking on and off by itself, and those plums

that would brood for days on the kitchen counter.

I remember holding you against the sink,

with the sun soaking the window, the soft call

of your hips, and the intricate flickers

of thought chiming your eyes. Your mouth,

like a Saturday. I remember your

long thighs, how they

opened on the sofa, and the pulse

of your cry when you came, and

sometimes I miss you

the way someone drowning

remembers the air.

I think about these students

in class this afternoon, itching

through this hour, their bodies new

to puberty, their brains streaked

with grammar – probably none of them

in love, how they listen to my voice

and believe my steady, adult face,

how they wish the school day would

hurry past, so they could start

spending their free time again, how

none of them really understands

what the clock is always teaching

about the way things disappear.

***

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