The words tumbled from Tuco as he greeted Arlu. “But,” he grumbled,
“Dancing makes me wordy.”¹ And he fell silent. He watched her face,
the shift and weave of light across her as she moved
closer. “You dance well,” she said, “Even silence is a dance.”

“It is to a different rhythm, perhaps.” And she paused, glanced up at clouds,
“You stir in me,” she began again, then, as the wind lifted flowers to hear,
“you stir in me a dance. I left, but the dance — the dance did not leave me.”

“The silence of that dance
never left me. I moved and moved,
swept in directions I did not know, did not choose.
As with the wind and the flower, I danced and danced in each place.
I found the song everywhere.” And she stopped. She looked at him, lifted
her eyes from cloud and wind in flowers to look at him, listen to his silent song.

Tuco watched, listened, waited.
So long he had waited to hear her speak again to him.
And now, as each time, the mystery of her filled him. In his silence
they danced. Once more, as wind and flower,
they danced
to a silent song that was everything.