Lilak Flowrs

you are doing better than you think you are

your best is okay

if you worry that you’re a horrible person that shows that you aren’t

you’re allowed a bad/off day

no one thinks as badly of you as you do

give yourself a break sometimes, you have permission

She danced with me

I began to hum along lightly

to the soft moving vibrations

of the song.

She smiled at me and kissed

my jaw with an upmost certainty,

plainly comforted by the harmonious

tones and the safely mannered

steps we took.

The room was small and covered

with minor scuff marks and old

paintings that she had picked out.

There was one window.

The weather looked beautiful outside.

A distant bird sang a brief tune.

“It is beautiful outside.”

The song drew to a brief stop before

beginning again,

this time with more urgency and

deliberation than before.

“How do you mean?”

“The sky and trees are

lovely from this window.”

We spun around again and

for a moment my gaze left the

window only to return to an

empty wall,

no outside world in sight.

“What window, dear?”

I chuckled at myself then

realizing how silly of me

it was to have thought

there could have been a

window and we continued

to dance to the same song,

twisting and turning with

our fingers and arms

interlocking.

I began to whistle the tune

of the bird I had listened to outside,

gently lifting and falling to the crests

and troughs of pitch I had briefly heard

previously.

A sharp smack landed upon my face.

I protested only to be met with another smack.

“I wished only to sing the

beautiful song I heard before.”

She wrapped cloth around my neck

covering my mouth.

She screamed and cried and wailed at

me for looking at the wall that once held

a beautiful window in it.

“You don’t want to dance with me

any more!”

She began tearing down paintings.

I tried to explain that I still wanted

to dance.

I wanted to dance outside.

I wanted to sing with the birds.

“You either dance with me only,

or sing with birds only.”

I nodded, tears rolling down my face.

We began dancing.

I said nothing to her.

I thought only of the birds and

the trees and how happy

we could be.