Learning the Dance, Missing the Beat

I thought the hunt would be teeth and shadow,

a clean arrow, a shout, the taken thing.

Instead, it begins in a hallway mirror

with a metronome app and my two left feet.

I’m after rhythm, the way some people stalk deer:

slow breath, soft heel, patient eyes.

Count in fours. Miss the turn. Start again.

Want is the snare drum; shame is the echo.

Every search draws a circle around the seeker.

I pace mine in eight-beat loops,

tracing the edge of what I don’t yet know.

How to enter a song and not break it.

I rehearse the near miss:

the party, the bright room, the music

that lifted everybody else like birds

and left me grounded, wingless, smiling too hard.

So I practice the small captures:

a clean step-back, the glide of weight.

My hands remember where to rest.

My shoulders are learning how not to flinch.

Hunting teaches you to notice:

the shift of air before the chorus,

the hush at the end of a bridge,

the way another body says yes without speaking.

Sometimes I catch it, a brief net of timing,

and the song, and I agree for a breath.

Sometimes it slips, running light over the field

while I stand in the stubble, listening.

Either way, I’m changed.

The one who missed learned to stay.

The one who caught learned to let go

before holding becomes harmful.

I am learning to dance in time for the next party,

which means I am learning to fail on purpose,

to step toward the moving thing

and meet it halfway.

The hunt is not the kill.

It is the quiet tongue of attention,

the promise to keep returning

until the feet know the way without wanting.

When the song comes again,

I won’t chase. I’ll join.

Not capture but accompany.

Two pulses lining up, and for once, not missing.