l a p s e

the triumph

For the time being we had plenty of cans up in the bedrooms. I didn't explore the house much, but I knew from a cursory run of the upstairs that there were two other bedrooms, a powder room and a balcony with stairs that led to the roof.

It started raining again in the afternoon, and we all holed up in the room I'd chosen for myself and slurped the sugared peaches from the cans until we bloated and groaned. The tap water began to taste more and more like the water from the stream we'd followed, and I grew used to the taste again.

After we'd eaten and collapsed, I ventured into the bathroom and locked the door. Then I peeled off my now threadbare and filthy clothes and looked at myself in the mirror. My body appeared grotesque and malnourished, distorted by the spiderweb of cracks in the center of the mirror and the low slanting light. My upper arms were nearly the size of my wrists, and whatever wiry muscle I'd once had was nothing now. My stomach was distended, my skin sallow and hanging off my body like a drape.

I whimpered. I would never be a dancer again. If I tried, I was sure, my bones would snap like toothpicks.

When the downpour gave us another reprieve, you and I went out to the balcony and up the stairs to the widow's walk that led to a more open spot of terrace, as big as the kitchen downstairs. There was no water standing, but the tile was damp, and I regarded it cautiously as if one step would bring a fountain screaming out.

Nothing of the sort happened, however, and you and I leaned on the railings and watched the sludge come alive below. The cherry-trees were long gone now, and so was the well to the side.

We talked well into the night. About our lives before, and our lives after – if there was to be an after, of course. About the sky and the moon and the stars and the small things we loved about the world.

I told you about my mother, and how when I had nightmares as a child she'd hold me until she – not I - fell asleep. How her lipstick was always flawless. How she always smelled like geraniums, from the small garden she religiously tended to.

And in return you told me about your sister. How you'd been born seconds apart and killed your mother in the process. How she had given you what you lacked and you had done the same for her. How you had been near inseparable since birth. You didn't mention your father.

Or the fact that they were probably dead.

I asked you about your job, before, and you told me you loved it because it was a kind of adventure every day, a place where you could turn into a machine, know exactly what to do. Surgery required a higher level of concentration, you said, and when you were in that state you felt invincible.

The second I told you I was a dancer you stepped back and looked at me, my legs and my waist and my shoulders, and I hid myself from your gaze, though it had not an ounce of lewdness. "Dance for me," you said, gently, like a breeze, and even though I was sure my bones would snap, I did.

I danced with the sky, which folded and murmured above my head. I danced with the shaking of the pine-trees, the keening of the birds, the hissing of the wind. I danced with the world I had learnt as the person I had become, and my bones did not break.