When we danced

When We Danced: Silently... Then Out Loud

The first time we danced, it wasn’t on a stage or in a room filled with music.

It was on the cracked pavement behind the art building, under a dying streetlamp, while the rest of the campus slept.

You didn't even know we were dancing.

But I did.

You stood there, hands buried in your coat pockets, shifting from foot to foot like you always did when something made you uncomfortable. I had just shown you my senior project: a series of oil paintings of movement. But I had painted shadows instead of bodies, emotions instead of limbs. You stared at them longer than anyone else had.

"I don't get it," you said. "But I feel it."

And when I laughed, relieved, your smile came slow. That was the first twirl, the first step.

We walked home in silence, shoulder to shoulder, sometimes brushing. Neither of us pulled away. The night was cold, but it didn't press between us like it usually did.

That was our first dance.

Quiet. Hesitant. Not with our feet, but with the space we allowed between our silences.

—

Over the weeks that followed, we choreographed a rhythm.

You would leave me coffee outside the studio when I stayed up too late. I’d slip notes into your sketchbook when you forgot to eat: “Breathe. The world can wait.”

We spoke in nods, in long looks, in shared playlists.

You drew music, even though you couldn’t play an instrument.

I painted feelings I never said out loud.

We both had our languages. We just hadn’t translated them yet.

We danced silently.

—

You never asked about my family. I never asked about yours.

You never pried when I stared too long at an empty canvas.

I never questioned the scar that wrapped around your left wrist like a bracelet of silence.

We were a duet of restraint.

Maybe we were afraid that if we asked, we’d unravel the thing we didn’t know how to name.

But the pull was there.

In the way you stood closer each time.

In how I didn’t flinch when your fingers brushed mine.

Still, the music played only in our minds.

—

Until the gallery night.

The last exhibition before graduation.

My final piece was called When We Danced.

A canvas five feet tall.

A swirl of two figures caught mid-motion—not touching, but close enough to feel each other's gravity. Their bodies were fragments of light and smoke, dissolving into the background.

People clapped. Professors spoke. But I only looked for your face.

You stood in front of it, still and unreadable.

When I approached, your eyes met mine.

“You painted us,” you said.

And I nodded. “I didn’t know how else to say it.”

You didn’t speak.

Then, without a word, you pulled out your sketchbook.

Inside was a drawing.

Two hands reaching for one another.

Finally, touching.

“I drew this weeks ago,” you said. “But I didn’t know if I was allowed to give it to you.”

I smiled through the burn in my eyes.

“You always were.”

—

That night, we danced again.

But this time, out loud.

Not in a studio. Not at a party.

But in your tiny apartment, barefoot on the wooden floor, music low, lights off.

You held me like you meant it.

We moved slowly—awkward at first, then fluid.

We laughed when we bumped toes.

You spun me like a memory, and I let myself fall into it.

No more silence.

No more waiting for the right time.

Just music. Just us. Just motion.

—

Years later, when we stood at the back of that same gallery for a new exhibit—this time not as students but as artists invited to speak—someone asked us when we fell in love.

You looked at me, then said, “When we danced.”

“And when was that?” the curator asked, smiling.

You paused.

“Silently,” I said, “at first.”

“Then out loud,” you added.

And the audience smiled, thinking it was poetic.

But it wasn’t poetry. It was memory.

It was all the moments we didn’t name, all the spaces we filled with movement instead of words.

It was learning to say I see you without sound.

And then, one day, finding the courage to speak.

To hold.

To spin.

To love.