her body no longer capable of orgasm and the violent passions of youth gives way to a sublime sensuality expressible only in the short and jagged steps of a tango where togetherness and surrender rule the day she lets herself be led unquestionably and unconditionally, feeling the weight of her ripeness heaving against a man she doesn't know, a man who asks for nothing gives nothing but the moment a moment without words without mind and erudition but filled with the waves of emotion produced by instrument and heart and sheer presence nor does she want anything but to float in his arms forever, or anyone who will hold her when the studio closes she goes home alone filled with the nostalgia for a time or place the Welsh call hiraeth -- the Welsh who know this solitude and regularly drown it in spirits the spirits of short-lived creatures who barely become awake to the miracle of mortality before expiring and being placed under rocks with a cross small creatures we are who die long before those in our lives bury us before anyone notices we're no longer there we fool them unintentionally because keep chattering, breathing... though sometimes so shallowly they put mirrors under our noses to make sure we die of attenuation as our vision fails, our teeth rot, our beliefs and values erode, and our poor hearts, weary of disappointment and betrayal lose their capacity to feel, to make the investment required of human contact we die bankrupt of character and intention, with only an empty dance and the memories of what it's like to be carried by the waves and mostly we never really live, walking through life like ghosts, the eidolons of banal novellas no one reads and for a single moment of brilliance a billion heartbeats [9-VII-24]