When it was dark she would put on her skates. The white laces (worn black where they settled against the metal grommets) would slide and course the length of the boot and she would tightly wind them around the tips of her feet and then her ankles, pulling them straight so that the stiff leather would squeeze her toes, her arches, and finally her ankles. She would wind the laces around her ankles on the outside, twice, then tie them. The skates looked cool that way, and intentional, and this wrapping on the outside of the boot held her so tight. Like a hug. She took care to wear thick white tube socks, so that her skin would not get rubbed inside the skates where she was boney.
Pushing off of one foot, the rumble of the pavement underneath would create a vibration inside her boot, inside her leg, inside her bones. It would radiate up her leg until she felt as if all of her were vibrating. Now the music would come from somewhere. Perhaps from today or another day; there was never a plan, it just arrived and it possessed the dancing. It was faint but all around and rhythmic. She would move through the night, being held up by the street light, cutting shapes, arcs, under and over, turning shapes with her skates. The animations below on the blacktop were her; it was her dancing, skating, sliding, vibrating shape.
She imagined in her head that all at once the world beyond the light and the dark had fallen away. In this time and place she was the only thing that existed, and she was incredible. Her body was all the way alive, vibrating, and moving to the sound in her head, moving to the scene in her head. It looked and felt to her the way music moves; she imagined that she was the music, pulsing through the air but grounded by the force of the pavement and light that held her.
Most of the time moving like this while the world was awake around her felt physically impossible. Her limbs were heavy. She did not have to will them to say still and down at her sides, because it was as if they had an extra gravity that wanted her to stay immobile. She wished to make herself smaller, narrower if she could somehow. Sometimes even looking out at the world felt like too much. It felt impossible to be seen like this all the way, when others might be, were, watching. But here in the dark under the light, only she existed. When she skated, she made up elaborate dances, made up moves, that her long and electric body performed.
How many times did she do this? How many nights over how many years? Just remembering the brightness of the deep, golden yellow light flooding, showering down, the dark stillness beyond, all around, instantly settled her. The driven, flitting insects circling the light, anonymously witnessing this energy moving, this dance, warmed her. The carving of shapes and time, even once, kept her moving in her mind for years. She was still skating in her mind, when she wanted to, when she needed to remember how it felt, how it feels- to be alive.
