This man was dancing. You’ve probably seen dancing men — for me it’s usually men.
Maybe they are pantomiming to the performance cast from some hidden devices. I wager they have the music in their heads. Many of these men will throw their hands and stare down passing cars for a moment of drama. They await the optimal millisecond to break the tension with a twirl, as the fist flips outward, outstretched: a feminine offering to a Passerby audience.
I danced. I used to dance just like this, on the street — for strangers who I imagined would swoon over my freedom to dance like this. I thought, if only YOU could hear what I’m listening to, you might just FEEL what I’m feeling. I moved from the downtown pace: four-on-the-floor, hands shotgunned into the deep pockets of a coat designed for theft. Enough momentum to create an isosceles triangle against the wind, the rippling trip-inducing sidewalk as my base.
Take a left toward Goodale Park as the Mind Eraser mixed with my buried, uncharted emotions.
The lyrics: what I’VE always said.
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And the drums: the way I’VE always meant.
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this body: the way I’VE always been destined to move.
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The way I can see my own grace from the outside of
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The over-sized steel toe boot catches a lifted edge of one buckling panel, breaking my gait. My isosceles standard becomes two-dimensional at once. I am in line with the footpath, smashing my glasses, tearing through the knees of my jeans.
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I am in a bush. I am in the mud. With old dirt caked beneath a fresh sheen of Earth. You can’t miss my bleach-splashed wardrobe, dazzled by nebulas of spills from cleaning the shop night after night in blatant disregard of keeping myself up to date.
Only me and the dancing men know what it is to let it go. The music is ever-changing — the music is the outfit. I see no need in reinventing my physical appearance when so much depth is procured by a Same Song On Repeat. Covered in dirt, inspired. I saw a dancing man, and I saw myself, a Dancing Man.