Silver Dancer

Snow falls on the highway as the sun dips behind the sharp mountains piercing the horizon. The sight is beautiful, and so I think of you. The snowflakes dance to the ground and it looks like the glitter that would shake from your skin when you glided across a stage. My mother thought it made you look cheap, whorish, like a 19-year-old in a downstairs club, she said. But my mother never had an eye for art.

The way you dressed made you inhuman. You looked gilded, poured from molten silver like the bangles on your wrists and the ornaments in your hair. Your dresses would whip around your hips like the wings of birds in flight, and I remember wondering if you might vanish in a flock of doves: revealed to be nothing more than a magician’s illusion, a beautiful trick of the light. When you won those competitions, I could only pity the mortal women who had dared to follow an act like yours. When you lost, I had to drown my anger and disbelief in gas-station shooters that tasted like paint thinner. But you never cared half as much as I did. You were there for the fun of it. I was there to bathe in the pride of watching a creature so beautiful, knowing she was mine.

The truck has something loose in the hold. It rattles and whines when the road grows rough but I do not care to investigate. I’m nearly at the stopping point in my route, and if I’m so inspired, I can climb into the container in the morning to find the problem. I pull behind a cheap hotel. It smells like smoke, and so I think of you.

I wish I hadn’t gotten you into smoking. But there was something so romantic about sharing the late-night air and corrupting it together. You left lipstick on the cigarette, and it transferred to my mouth when I took a drag. You said I looked beautiful, that I should try it on and give the ‘butch thing’ a rest. I let you swipe that red stain across my lips but it didn’t suit me at all. As soon as I saw myself in the mirror, I decided the color would look much better peppered across your neck and shoulders. You whined that it looked like you had been swarmed by hornets when I finally let you go. I made a buzzing sound with my front teeth and kissed more pink welts across your chest.

I fall asleep quickly when I tangle myself in the hotel sheets. The blankets smell like bleach and dust, but I grow used to them after a minute. I have no dreams I remember and I awake early to use the hotel’s gym equipment. There’s only a treadmill and a bench press. My nose crinkles when I see a Styrofoam cup full of yellowed water and dead bugs sitting on the bench. I set it on the treadmill, then do a full set of 180, 200, and 220 pounds. My arms burn when I’m finished and I know they will tremble on the steering wheel when I drive. I figure the worst that could happen is I lose my grip and fly off the road. I imagine what the semi would look like, how Coca-Cola, Diet Dr Pepper, or whatever garbage they have me driving would explode across the asphalt. I picture you figure skating over frozen soda.

The winter was your favorite season. I found this utterly bizarre. To me, bearing the cold always felt like being assaulted by the air itself. I was like a splinter being rejected from skin, a foreign body in an organism trying to dissolve me. Nature was a hostile host, and the sharp winter wind was the weapon she wielded to drive out unwanted guests. You, however… you could never be unwanted. The frigid air only ever made you glow, your nose and cheeks dusted vivid pink and your lips darkened like a bruise. Secretly, I thought your favorite thing about the winter was how you looked decorated by snow. Snowflakes glinted like stars in your midnight-colored hair and you knew it was enchanting.

I settle in the driver’s seat and strap my seatbelt over my chest, though the action makes my tired shoulders ache. It’s just past six in the morning and the snow on the road is undisturbed. I put my faith in the company tires and begin down the highway. The stereo system still has a CD inside, left behind by a previous driver. I let it play, and soft piano and Latin vocals swell in the cabin. I can’t understand a word of the singing woman but her voice twists with heartache so palpable I nearly turn it off. Instead, I let my eyes grow misty as the mountain finally catches sunlight.

It was springtime when you first injured your ankle. You had been spinning in delight on the steps to your apartment, and for the first time in your life, your dexterity failed you. I wasn’t there when you fell, but I was with you when the doctors warned you not to dance. I knew from the steady burn in your eyes that you would not listen. It began harmless enough as you twirled on your crutches and bounced on your good leg. But there’s a bird inside of your body that thinks stillness is death; Advil and naproxen could not keep up with its demands.

You only stopped when it hurt so badly you cried. Your ankle was swollen, threatening to swallow your foot with flesh and skin. You couldn’t leave your apartment, couldn’t feed yourself, so I moved into that tiny studio to care for you. I carried you to the shower, I cooked you eggs in the morning, and I helped you shimmy into loose sweatpants when you dressed.

This was the first time you told me you loved me, that you needed me. Soon, you said you would die without me.

You were so human when you said it.

The sun rises in the sky and burns my vision as it bounces against the snow. The pale light is so blinding I might as well be driving on the surface of a star. I squint, fumbling for sunglasses I do not find. I pull over to the side of the road and rest my watering eyes on my cold palms. The woman continues to sing.

It took weeks before you could limp to the kitchen by yourself. That time had stolen something from your spirit and I was impatient for you to regain the divinity in your smile. We spent so much time together it was like we had been welded by the lips and hands. And yet, when you asked if I would ever want to marry you, I sincerely believed it was a joke.

I’m not sure what about it sounded so absurd. I’m not sure why I laughed in your face.

But you did not laugh back.

I looked at you then, and you seemed like a stranger to me. Your hair was unwashed, your clothing was crumpled, your skin was dull and your expression empty. I had fallen in love with a nymph in silver, and I did not recognize this ordinary woman with tears on her waterline.

I went home that night. I had been gone for so long that my houseplants had died in my absence. You did not text me in the morning.

I went about my life. You went about yours.

And I did not hear from you again.

Unable to find my sunglasses, I finally climb in the back of the truck. I remember wearing them when I was helping load in pallets of soda. Towers of bottles scrape the ceiling and a vending machine is wedged in the corner. I shimmy through the narrow gap against the wall, use my phone as a flashlight, and hope it will catch on a pair of shiny lenses. I do not find the sunglasses; instead, the light bounces off a toppled gumball machine full of little plastic canisters. I identify it as the source of the incessant rattling and steady the machine upright.

You told me ages ago that you envied the women of eras past. I pointed out such women were rarely allowed to be in lesbian relationships, but you had flapped your hand in dismissal. It was true, you said, they may have been condemned to privacy, but think of the love letters! Love letters were a dead art, smothered by phone calls and instant messaging. Yet they had a potency that could not be replicated through digital means, because texts and phone calls are too easy to carry depth.

The good parts were always too easy.

I hope you don’t mind that I printed this. My handwriting was never especially legible. The gumball machine wants a full two dollars in quarters now, and it took me four tries to get this ring. I thought it would look pretty on your finger.

I hope you are well, Natalie.

I hope you are dancing.