one last dance \\ Audrey Lai

do you wonder what would happen if you could do it all over again?

your mother told you that you had piano hands.

they were long and thin and soft, but you never did touch those ivory keys or play a grace note. not in this timeline, anyway.

your father told you that it was time for him to go when you were seven.

sometimes it was in the sixth year, or the eighth year, or even the tenth year. but it takes away your piano hands, and now they are calloused, your fingertips like firm plums plucked from the trees in the garden that don’t exist in this line.

sometimes you don’t see it coming -

• a sharp throbbing sensation in your back, pain spiking through your body and scarlet trickling down your skin, or

• a simple push off the precipice by foreign fingers,

your arms flailing as you fall down,

and after all this time you shouldn’t be scared,

because you’re not really dying! you should land like a cat on its feet! (a cat with plenty more than nine lives, mind you!)

but you flail around, eyes darting around for a savior branch like a kit-cat klock,

your heartbeat a rapid tiktoktiktoktiktoktiktoktiktok

but this time, the end is a slow one, its arms wrapping around you and holding you tight, first like an overly enthusiastic relative who means well, then a creepy stranger who turns on your internal monologue alarm please get off of me right now please get off of me right now and then a snake, a choke hold wrapping around your neck like a deadly little scarf.

and like it always does, your vision blurs, and out of the fog is a tear in the ceiling, its contents all-consuming, a pocket of the universe.

it whispers to you, a warm breath on your neck. it’s inviting you to another dance, another twirl, another spin.

i’m getting old, you croak.

your face will be new again, perfect like porcelain, it promises, its hand already reaching for yours.

i really must rest, you say, but you begin to take its hand anyway.

you haven’t found him yet, it replies, taking you into its arms. you part your lips to respond, but the song has already begun.

one last dance.