Dancing

Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (1889) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

By Adora Svitak

Remember the untz-untz-untz of house music?

Remember low light and blacklight,

a club called Opium, a club in Sanlitun,

a sticky-floored house with wooden walls

and ancient letters for a name?

Remember kissing some boy whose name

you don’t remember, remember asking a

girl you half-liked if you could kiss her,

Remember the clack-clack of your teeth

against hers at the wrong height difference

on a black table while the rich kids watched?

Remember the sweat pooling in the small of your back,

skin gone glossy with the sheen lit purple,

Go-go girls in cutoff shorts pouring tequila

out of glass bottles into your open mouth

Like a benediction, like communion,

You were never one for any religion but this,

Remember arms and legs multitudinous writhing

like the sea serpents strangling Laocoön,

Remember jumping when the beat dropped?

Remember after, your wet face, peeling off the

fake leather thigh-highs and sitting on the yellow curb

Leaning on each other, hoarse-voiced and spent,

Watching out the window as you left the silent city,

Towers twinkling and their lights

molten gold, paint across the water.

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Adora Svitak is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer. Her stories, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in publications including Apogee Journal, 8Poems, BUST, the Huffington Post, and numerous others. Her book Speak Up! Speeches by young people to empower and inspire was published from Quarto in February 2020.