Dancing With Closed Eyes

We'd been dancing around each other for so long that I forgot who made the first move. I don't remember how it started, not exactly. All I know is that one day you showed up and I couldn't imagine my life without you anymore. But we came with an expiration date. Things like this never ended well for me. And though this one had trouble written all over it, I chose to dive right in.

Being with you was like walking through quicksand. The more time we spent together, the deeper I sank. It was only a matter of time until I drowned in you. I'd just been waiting for one of us to take a wrong step. To take it too far. 

Because once I opened up, there was no going back. Once I let my secrets and the things I'd been hiding out into the world, a part of me would be gone. Irrevocably and irreplaceably so. Over the years, I'd learned to keep it all in. Not because I wanted to. I felt like I had to. Who I was deep down could be used against me - I learned this the hard way. 

So I locked it all away deep inside of myself, hid it in a hollow space between my skin and bones where nobody could reach it. But we'd been getting closer and closer, and I became so afraid that you would want to unearth what I'd been trying so hard conceal. Didn't want you to learn what I could be when the lights went out. Vulnerable. Cruel. Selfish. Doubtful. Weak. 

If you didn't like what you saw, would you suddenly dance out of my reach? Would you move to a different song, in a different room? Would you turn your back on me? I would have understood. It's not like I like to look at these fragments of myself, either. So why would you?

I told myself I wouldn't let you get too close. That I'd keep you at arm's length - I would only let you look at the parts I was familiar with, the parts I tolerated, and keep the rest under lock and key. Because if I opened all the way up and you decided to leave, I wouldn't know how to stich my skin back together. I never learned how to be whole again after giving so much of myself away.

But it turned out I didn't have to worry so much about the things you could have possibly seen. When I showed up again at the place we used to meet, you didn't come. Not on the day that followed. You never came again. But I returned, the only one who could still hear the music. A lonely pair of feet slowly moving to the rhythm, tracing the blurring lines of a fading memory.