There’s so little sweetness in the music I hear now,
no croons, no doo-wop or slow ones where you could
hug up with someone and hold her against your body,
feel her heart against yours, touch her cheek
with your cheek–and it was ok, it was allowed,
even the mothers standing around at the birthday party,
the rug rolled back in the living room, didn’t mind
if you held their daughters as you swayed to the music,
eyes squeezed shut, holding each other, and holding on
to the song, until you almost stopped moving,
just shuffled there, embracing, as the Moonglows
and Penguins crooned, and the mothers looked on
not with disapproval or scorn, looked on with their eyes
dreaming, as if looking from a thousand miles away, as if
from over the mountain and across the sea, a look
on their faces I didn’t understand, not knowing then
those other songs I would someday enter, not knowing
how I would shimmer and writhe, jig like a puppet
doing the shimmy-shimmy-kokobop, or glide from turn
to counter turn within the waltz, not knowing
how I would hold the other through the night
and across the years, holding on for love and dear life,
for solace and kindness, learning the dance as we go,
learning from those first, awkward, shuffling steps,
that sweetness and doo-wop back at the beginning.