Dance
(in response to Vaudeville)

 

You tell me to dance

to songs I do not know;

to hollow sound.

 

But the dead

don’t dance,

and we’re a thousand feet

below ground.

 

You tell me to dance

when I can barely breathe,

drowning in the smoke

of my last cigarette.

 

But you,

you wear your smile on your sleeve.

 

Never alive,

you’ll never know what it means to die,

and my hell is your Neverland;

my nightmare, your hazy dream.

 

You never ask why

we are buried alive

or left to miss

what we’ll never

remember.

The only light we’re left

is an ember

of what we used to know.

 

You tell me to dance,

when I am nothing but shadow.

 

You, in your boyish trance,

will never know,

lost in laughter,

how yesterday, they took our dreams,

and tomorrow, they’ll take our water.

 

You dance away

from truth I can’t forget;

from which I cannot run.

 

But there is sunlight in your step,

though we’ve lived 10 years without the sun. 

Sara Popa