The Unified Theory of Salsa
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His left foot moves left
His right foot moves right
His right hip moves forward
He steps on something soft
He hears a deep breath - inhaling
She smiles awkwardly
Is there an equal and opposite
reaction behind her lips?
His breathing quickens
a bead of sweat
an enormous, torrential
sluice of sweat
is dropping off his nose
To the floor
Plop
Plop
A couple gyrates past with a birdlike grace–
sequined plumage the light refracts, unwilling,
or unable to hold them, like notes through the window
He doesn’t know the Spanish
but he can feel it, language is strange
like that - sometimes it transmits
through the static corridor of silence
opening between steps. She breaks
like an excited electron repelled and
attracted to new partners
He puts a cold beer to his forehead
Hoping to unfog
dance lesson memories
counting mental steps
spinning mental hips
…. ……… ………. … . ………
…….. …………………. . . …….
…… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… ……………………
After an hour the space closes in,
but the music expands the walls
bursts the bar into a continent, two bodies
two billion bodies, in perpetual motion
rubbing rifts into the tectonic plates
She spins, her hair covers his eyes
for a moment, the darkness, the language
he doesn’t speak but understands
the body that isn’t his but is
The moment of motion, inhalation
resounds into the quantum, beyond
time and gravity and loss - a never ending
celebration of the purpose and capability
of the human body, and he steps–
on something soft.
She took six months of classes
so her body could enjoy music again
She tolerates some for forgetting, some
for never knowing a dance is just a dance
There’s a memory she has that she’s
never remembered - her body belongs
in motion - pieces of herself she agonizes
over each morning and evening
fall into place like tumblers into a lock
that doesn’t open, but stays in the moment
that both lock and key reach their pinnacle
Something hard slams down on her foot