These nights I feel we’ve really tuned into each other,
our frequencies matching and melding into the same wavelength.
We share remembered scenes from novels we are reading
that are particularly poignant or powerful to us,
at times exchanging exact quotes right as they catch our attention.
Some moments we stop reading altogether and just talk for awhile.
Tonight a favored topic seems to be love and the nature of true love:
how marriage, when done right, is the best kind of freedom ever.
But what do we know?
We made up the steps to our own particular dance.
It’s not universal. This work isn’t published.
And we aren’t perfect in our execution of the moves.
We stumble from time to time…but we never step on each other’s toes.
We know when to laugh as our dancing feet get a little goofy and clumsy.
We laugh at ourselves, and each other, but not in any way that hurts…
unless you count sides hurting from
an over-abundance of mirth experienced all in one sitting.
We aren’t always this silly with our dance routine, however.
Sometimes, it’s a beautiful, formal affair—
all feathers and petals, soft lighting and romance.
Sometimes, perhaps, a bit of the forbidden quality—
not for weddings and small children,
this Couples Only for only one couple.
In the end we know, no matter what tempo or style,
whether it’s a graceful waltz or some freestyle we have constructed for that night,
there is only one thing that really matters,
the same thing that will always matter,
the reason we dance in the first place:
the one and only person who holds you in their arms
like no one before ever has and no one ever will again,
the one who has made you realize
you never really knew how to dance before.
You were just pretending.

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