New Moves

See that scar on your mother's foot

She ever tell you how she got it?

No?

Well, all right, I'll tell you, she won't mind.

There was a dance one night

At the community center

Tradition, donated brownies, stuffy inside

Humid air, getting hot

and so was she, but don't tell her I said that

Glimmering metallic ribbon, balloons everywhere

High heels and perfume, she wore them too

Newly bought shoes and an artificial flower

all that seemed real about her

Onstage, in a haze of sheet music and too-long hair

clarinet lost amid the saxophones

One song

Maybe two

She'd seen him, turned pink, waved

Dancing with her friends

Perfume worn off by the time he came down

Shyly danced

He couldn't very well

Maybe it didn't matter

Sweating through his shirt

Still charming

Took her hand after a spin

Look in his eyes like no other

Losing circulation in his fingertips

Cut off by her rather firm grip upon him

He isn't complaining.

New moves.

Spun, stumbled, gashed open her foot with her heel

limped off to doctor it up

Crinkly paper towel and scotch tape is the evening's chaperone

She shakes another's hand

Unbelievable, who'd've thought--

“Dance with me?” says he.

New moves indeed.

Whirling, twirling, smiles curling

The confident one's grin unfurling

Sulking on a hard plastic chair, he is

Jealous?

Jealous of those

New moves.

Returning giddy, amazing dancer

Criticism

She only smiles bigger

“You are.”

He is.

She knew it.

She loves him.

Won't say it.

But she says it's no matter

His new moves are no match for--

Well, she doesn't say it

but they're no match for him.