If I Ask You To Dance...

Dancing is a beautiful form of self expression that was once unknown to me
Be it that I lived a life of muted emotion
Commotion and noise never got a rise out me
See I had parents who reveled in oxymoronically their lack of feeling
Peeling layers never quite necessary for these walking onions to bring tears
Fears growing in me as a child that I never learned to voice or express
Unless it came out as aggression or the like
My psych at the time a questionable, worrisome one
Me being the second child of three, at the age of 2, attempting to snuff out the life flame of the third son
Run from me if you could I was a devil child
Mild? Quite the opposite
A bit like the difference between the valley and the summit
Dark alleys feeling more like home
Throne made of lies I tried convincing myself happy
Sappy and unsuccessful
Stressful in the least
Hungry in the night my insecurity would consume my world
Hurled into bleak yet evidently receding darkness as time passed
Masked over my true feelings, for some time, white lifeless plastic smiles...
Light didn't find it's way to me all too quickly
I wore a lot of different shoes..
And walked many miles...

I realize I've, as an understatement "done some things" in this life
Regrettable ones.
And I know everybody has done something.
But just know that I've "done some things".

I've also seen some scary things in this life...
Terrible things.
And I know everybody has.
I know.
I get it.
But just know, again, that I've seen some things.

I've .... thought some scary things in this life.
Yes I know that doesn't make me special...
Trust me I do.
But just know, again, please, that I've thought some things...

And that these things matter.
And that these things never left me.
Me, the kid obsessed with the self-assigned task of remembering
Dismembering at times my sanity
Vanity at its finest chasing after the tails of those ghosts
Hosts that posses and call my dreams home
Sown deep at my own discretion

I refuse to let myself off the hook so easy.
Sleazy in the least I make sure I feel all the pain I feel I deserve
You cannot observe this process because it is handled within the confines of my head 
And heart
A la carte to day to day life
Strife eaten in slow labored bites...

But dance, as stupid as it sounds, but dance- let's me put all my internal quarrels down for a minute.
And in those moments I'm no longer human
I'm not even the devil child who ran in front of a car that warm summer day hoping it would hit him so he could stop feeling so cold..
I'm an empty vessel filled with an emotionally charged energy and puppeteer-ed from the great beyond by strings formed of musical notes
And in the space around me I get to express and love and live and feel
Feel for all of the times I wasn't sure how to, or chose not to, or couldn't...
I do not care to remember now ( though inevitably I do) how I found it,
But what matters is that I did.

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So if I ask you to dance with me...
Take my hands and feel things with me.
Feel it all.
Look me in the eyes-
Or don't. Maybe...
Feel it in the tremble of my fingers
Or the clammy-ness of my own two palms
Or the tension of my back
And know I am shaking because you are now holding my entire world
All the things that I've done and said and felt and thought and become in spite of all my darkness,
The progress I've made in fixing myself,
The raw emotional quintessence of all that I am and ever will be
In your delicate, pillow-soft hands that I've frighteningly and yet willingly chosen
And know that you are, in this moment, my light.
That I hate giving up control of my life, but this time... At least for now... "alright."

If I ask you to dance with me...
I'm not asking you to fall in love with me.
I'm not even asking you to be my prized object...
I'm asking you, quite simply, in these fleeting moments, to feel with me.
Truly feel with me.
Nothing more, nothing less.
And for that moment to be all that we need.