a song for the birds - eisley

"Care for this dance?"

Her laughter fills the air. The streetlights glow above us.

Orange. Yellow. White.

She smiles, and nods, gives a mocking curtsy while I give a half-bow.

I pass her the earbuds usually hanging freely from my phone.

I take one, she takes the other, safely placed now inside our ears.

The cable makes it difficult to do much more than sway,

but we make it work, and it's all we got,

so I go ahead and press play.

Bass drum, snare, the constant high-hat in the background,

definitely not a song that screams 'romance',

but we make it work, and it's all we got,

and it really is all we need.

I bite my lip and smile, guiding her through a fox-trot,

which is ridiculous since all I can really do is

a high-school level of waltz.

But she doesn't care, and she doesn't mind,

so we keep stepping

front then back, then side to side.

She removes the earbud to let me spin her,

then places it right in her ear once again.

The corners of her eyes crinkle,

and I can't tell if what I see is an added burn;

an added question I have no idea how to even phrase,

let alone guess how to answer the way I'm guessing that

she'd prefer to pretend we know how to fox-trot

instead of going for the worn-out steps of a waltz.

But we make it work, since it's all we got,

and I keep telling myself that as the song fades out,

because God knows I'm too much of an idiot

to have picked a song that simply goes on,

and on, and

on.