for Agnes and Jackie
When they were about five years old, she stumbled as they
danced to the Christmas music playing on the old Bakelite radio. He picked her
up from the wooden school floor. She smiled.
When he was thirteen, they danced together for the very
first time as a couple. He had been learning to dance in secret to impress her
at the party. She laughed as they danced.
At the wedding, they danced the way they had back when they
were thirteen years old and the music was the same as the old school Bakelite radio.
When their first child was born, he ran outside the
hospital doors and danced in the rain and thanked the angels for their
kindness.
As their daughter received her degree from the college,
the two of them danced a little dance as they walked up to hug her.
At their silver wedding anniversary they danced with
their grandchildren and they wondered how they had ever got so lucky.
Every week they danced in the ballroom, and every week
they would leave the hall feeling better than they had arrived.
When the doctor told him it was a brain tumour, he never
spoke of it, not to her or to the children. Naturally the doctor had told her but
she never mentioned it, either.
One day, he stumbled during the dance and she picked him
up from the old wooden floor.
He said, “I think we should stop the dancing now."
She turned away from him and let the tear run down
her face.
bobby stevenson 2012
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