We lost dancing

Like a pigeon, I’m wandering around Batthyány Square. One of the most beautiful buildings is in front of me. But tonight, it doesn’t excite me. I don’t know where to look. I’m a bit distressed, circling like I’m lost, in a place where I’ve been more than a thousand times. Suddenly it feels foreign. I am lost indeed. I don’t know where I am. I can’t find the space for this scene in my heart tonight. I know she shows up in this very spot twice every single day. She owns this square, but I don’t have a place in her heart and life anymore, and it makes me feel as if I don’t have a place here either. I don’t belong here, I’m an outcast. Exiled.

It’s close to midnight, yet I’m afraid and anxious, and maybe a little bit hopeful that I might bump into her. Maybe I’m not lost, I’m just uninterested in the view, because I was scanning for her.

My chest is heavy. Is the black hole still in there? I don’t know.

I’m on my way home from a dance show. A season-closing gala of my friends. They dance salsa, but the event had West Coast Swing as well. I knew she wasn’t going to be there, she learns dancing at another school. Watching all the WS dancers evoked ambivalent feelings in me. I was inspired and wished I had started sooner so I could be dancing like them already. But another weird feeling arose. Perhaps jealousy or sorrow to think that she’s on another gala dancing so eloquently, softly, and intimately with someone else but me.

All I’m to her now is a stain on her conscience. A mistake. Regret. Something she probably wishes she had never done. Something to bury deep and forget. Guilt and shame.

We won’t dance ever again.

Saturday, 20 June 2026