#i hope you dancea gain

[pencap]

you are rusty, an instrument that has not played itself in some time. the caress of hands on your fluted steel is foreign - you flinch as you realise that the notes are off key. you try to tune yourself again.

you are not quite reaching the sibylline heights that you used to idle above with your pretty lyrics. it is okay, you chant. let me be kind to myself. it's been so long since I have sung my stories. let me be kind to myself. there is no tear shed without reason.

you are a musical little box, opening up. and so what if it had been dusty for a while? so what if the ballerina's spin is a little crooked? there is heritage in it, this ceaseless grace of weighted things. you are here now and your rust will gradually be scrubbed clean.

soon, soon, soon, the tarnish will be gone. you will be whole again. and even in the moments your momentum is lost to the gently falling dust, the reaction of oxygen and water with metal, you are living, and that is why you change. you are living. someday there will be the change that will gratify you for the better.

everything feels a little bit stiff, a little bit off-kilter. my fingers are a little clumsy; my voice is a little hoarse; my words are little stilted. but they're here. and i'm here.

sometimes a favourite old blanket is just as you remember it, all soft and warm and encompassing, wrapped around you just like it was all those years ago. sometimes it is threadbare and too-small now, but that doesn't make it any less dear. you can wash it clean again. you can wrap it over your shoulders, if not your whole body. it's still here. and you're still here.

at the end of the day, isn't that all we have? isn't that all that matters? we walk back to familiar streets and find them changed, or find ourselves changed, or both. we still get to choose what that means now. we try, and we change, and we try again. the world tries, and the world changes, and the world tries again.

i'm still here. you're still here. the world is still here. we are all still trying. we are all still changing. we are all still living.