I can't dance. Don't even ask me to. You will, of course, given time. I'll tell you that I can't dance. You'll convince me to give in, and I will. You'll see that these words aren't simply a work of fear or discomfort, but a representation of fact, plain and true. We'll share an awkward moment afterward. You'll say I did fine. I'll nod and thank you. The goodbyes will be permanent. I won't look back to watch you leave. I won't see the white of your legs as you sit in your car. I won't see the seven million little things about your face that make you a ghost in the memories of the men who've come before. I won't remember your name. I won't imagine the course of your car, the grooves it cuts in the grassy trails of this city's streets. Don't ask me to dance.

We have a chance if you don't.

In seventeen-thirty-two, they built this house. They built it from the bones of their trampled hope. It's been handed down, since. Handed down and shattered with every hay-century. It's been built up again, but always within the memory of what it has always been. It looks different, now, but the living that has passed within has survived unchanged for all of these years.

If, as we stand in the living room, having just come from the library, I look to you and say that I've never minded your crying, that your sadness is inconsequential to me, that I've never considered the plight of mosquitoes in Africa, it will only be my echo of things said in the late nineteenth century in a room much like this one and atop the same foundation. If you cry, you'll know how little it matters, not just to me, but within the frame of these walls and years.

The first brick-masons to come to our city made it what it is. Their work is gone, unremembered, but they taught us how to see a city such as this. We have no other way to see. If you see me, don't see my skin. See deeper than that, until you see nothing more than the decaying wall to which my back is faced. I'll charm you more in my absence than I ever could with these eyes of mine, with this mouth. I am heavier in walls and vases and sofas and windows than my skeleton could ever support.

On the subject of support, I'll offer none. I hope you can forgive this. I hope you'll never know. I hope and hope and hope, but sleep is the easier pass-time. Give in to the cold in my hands. Forget your hopes at the door. You can claim them in the morning. They will be just as you left them.

An introduction is in order. My name is irrelevant. This is my home.

Timestamp: 03.01.07 at 10:10 PM. Filed under: Fiction.