I. The dancer is an acetic. He is not one but all of the flapper’s infinite beads. He is a kerosene fire, providing little warmth, threatening combustion. He possesses the kind of elegance that can only be captured in black-and-white: an ancient parchment face, the bruise of the mouth, the opulent moon of a cheekbone, the iris-shaped ear. He is the dagger in the bedcovers, the knife in the waistband; he is the cream of the sky.

II. I watched him in the same way astrologers regard constellations: with a romantic ideal of tangibility, of mud-between-toes, of stars-under-fingernails (despite the impossibility, despite the distance). Sometimes, I felt as though I knew him. He smoked his cigarettes outside the school; one foot kicked up behind him with this outdated bravado, of old spy movies and westerns. I watched him kiss the girl with borealis white hair, and I felt not a jealousy, but an excitement, a sort of challenge, course through me. It was hard loving the dancer. It was like calling down the moon, you might say. But thank God for the eclipse.

III. When we met, he was lighting matches outside, in love with his own ability to ignite, as though the flame came not from the matches but from his own fingers. His nails were painted black and infinitely delicate. Plutonian.

IV. He couldn’t read. Can you imagine? This knowledge shattered me. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and he couldn’t read. I burned my books for him. I took up the great green cross. I took up the lion’s paw.

V. I was going to be a writer, before I met the dancer. After all the words transpired above the mountain, leaving nothing but ash, I realized that I had sacrificed my fate for another fate. I thought of a song about a witch who steals children from their beds, and I danced until the fields darkened and the lilies soured. I decided I was starting anew. Like the bud, like the bird, like the baptism. We would have to create our own language, the dancer and I.

VI. Here is what no one will tell you: it is possible to be an outlaw and a sentimentalist. We drank from frosted glasses of milk, sat at marble counters, and hummed jukebox songs. We swayed like reeds on an abandoned beach. We made love in hammocks. We embraced as fork tines.

VII. When we at last found gold, our wings began to fray. Lacy as two moths, we sat on our pile of treasure and watched the sun come up. The dancer kissed me, said, “We’re Midas in the gold room.” It was the first and last time he spoke.

VIII. Historians are of the opinion that King Midas was never real, was merely a figment of myth. But we are real. I must remind myself of that.

IX. In that moment, I finally understood why the dancer did not make a habit of using words. Words are so limiting. Take love, for example. Who’s to say that what I felt for the dancer was love? Who’s to say it wasn’t? If anyone can present a case in defense of either, I will be forever in their debt.

X. When the dancer left, the world was in an in-between place, of dreaming and waking. A physicist would call it the ‘boundary between turbulence and order.’ I think he dared himself to do it. To leave, just to prove that he still could. He left so much more than he took. He left bloodstain and razor blade and matted white sheets, a lock of hair stranded on the pillowcase. Like the scab that is ripped off the wound.

XI. My first instinct was to consume as many words as I could, but I found myself unable to digest them after all that time.

XII. Perhaps that is what ‘love’ is: that which leaves you stranded, swollen with unsaid things. But this is all an approximation.

XIII. I saw the dancer again, years later, in a dream. Why didn’t you leave a note? I asked. I thought maybe you were dead. He didn’t answer but smiled sort of crookedly, as if to say, “No words, remember?”