Last Dance

We drive out south. Flowers on the dashboard. The sky splashed with stars. Day heaving into night. You park your car under the trees. “The ocean is a powerful thing”, you say, and we all turn to look. The shadows and the streetlights are swimming across the street, and out there, in the dark, the sea is smouldering in. Judy brought us here. “It’s a beautiful night”, she says “and sometimes you have to just go”. 

How big. How blue. Sydney. All sand on your clothes, salt on your lips, sunburn on the back of your neck. The midday sun at fever pitch. Boys at the beach after school, speed-dialling their brave faces, as the surf starts to tease them. Cicadas clicking their wings. Fruit bats flying like the gulls. The wind–howling and wild–picking up. Lightning snaring the clouds. The storms howling in. So under the weather! In the Uber like it’s a getaway car–we take shelter inside, light the wicks and talk up late. The town casts its spell on us, as they all did.  

How different are all these cities anyway? They all bleed together. I can only remember them in flashes. Baseball caps. Dahlias. How I was a kid from so far away, and you leant across the table and raised your glass to it. You: how fast, and sweet, and loud you all talk. California: how that word feels red and cursive–sometimes I say it just so I can sing it. Downtown! Snow! Thanksgiving! Walking to work wrapped in the scarf that you lent me. How it felt like all the traffic in New York had stopped–because under that orange ceiling, you shook my hand and believed in me. 

You. You. And You. How we plunged up the escalators towards London and then back down to the underground. Together at Christmas and the New Year. Having lunch every day in Brussels with you all–and at once, feeling at home so far away from it. January! February! Walking around your small town with a box of Krapfens. “It’s no New York” you said, but that didn’t matter, because being with you was big enough.

And then there’s us. Side by side. How alive. How un-alone. We wore our shoes until they broke running for trains we almost missed. Blue sky unblinking in our heads. Blood still young, and running on what?

All the words I want to say stick to my throat at the airport. Goodbyes are a kind of motion sickness. Sharp. Heavy. Deep blue. Tears spilling out past the lash lines. We hold onto each other, and stay there, in each other’s arms, before we let go. You must leave to catch your flight. I watch you go, and you turn back to look at me. Together we walk away.

When all is said and done, what do I know now that I did not know before? Magic is certain. Magic is everywhere. It lights up every dark room. It holds up this tiny blue world, and pulls us all close. Even when you think something, somehow, has spooked it and sent it bolting away. It will come to you. It is saving another last dance for you. Hold your breath and you can hear it. It is moving towards you. It is about to arrive. Hold on. 

I am back home now. Thundering down the road. My old city watching over me. This wide world: waiting, roaring, calling. My heart–my home–booming, blasting, beating outside my chest. I tuck my hair behind my ears and cross the street. And so it was. And so it is. And so I go.

Originally published on World’s Greatest Internship here.