Moonfall

Not even the dancers themselves
can comprehend this waltz:
They stalk and tip-toe warily uncomfortable.
One spins, wobbles, because it’s all
it wants to do
can do so
the Other must keep watch, steady, tugging
when needed
they dance
a thin, telepathic tether between
rhythm and ruin

They’ve danced so from the beginning though
neither can remember what they were back then
or who came first or
who’s orbiting who anymore or
what the other looked like only
now barren, scarred, shriveled and frozen,
shifting, brimming, inching valleys and curves
in the movement they independently weigh
the odds of the other vanishing between now and the next breath
swallowed into memory’s aching void,
or the other dancing away and not looking back
or looking back and still dancing away
a dozen apocalypses huddled in the eclipse
of each step and sway

They dance
knowing that the music will stop
and that there’s still time to save this
collide again
rip away the void between
the gaps of their skin
become the void between
themselves but they don’t
because to stop would be to acknowledge
that neither dancer is immortal and to be
mortal means to break
ice back into water, flooding the wrinkles
tearing down time-cracked stone, gray
and dim
enough to flicker out gently, blinding nobody
but blinding the world with darkness
and the spinning dancer will have no choice but
to falter, beholding the hard hands
that kept her steady withering
to ashes
and the Earth suffocates to a stop
but such a thing is incomprehensible
for they are both immortal
they dance
spinning the world around them
breathing, wondering—