glitter & shine

The lights are like a thousand supernovas. Big and brilliant, luminosity rocketing over the crowd of college students dancing to the band’s covers of ballads and retroactive pop music. This is before the world shuts down, one shimmering moment in early 2020.

In the middle of all the glitter and shine, I’m swirling in and out of the refracted light with an assorted encircling of protective arms to keep me upright. For once, I’m embracing the noise, the cacophony, the blasts, the beacons.

It’s a frigid Saturday night, I’m surrounded by people who love me, and I performed magic on a purple cocktail dress I bought for eight dollars at the thrift store, coaxing it to embrace my body.

Last Thursday, my grandfather succumbed to his yearlong fight with Stage IV lung cancer, surrounded by his wife, his children, his grandchildren. I’m 480 miles away in Pennsylvania, a gaping maw of distance between my life here and my family back in New England. In a day, I’ll be on a flight back to Portland, bearing my heart in one hand and my funeral attire in the other, but right now, I’m dancing.

Tonight, I’ve decided the world outside ceases to exist. Our university’s dining hall has been transformed into a winter wonderland, with garland and snowflakes fluttering in the motion of hundreds of people. I spin and whirl and feel the music, letting the vibrations roll off my back like thunder. Growing up, I was a ballet dancer, and all that grace and poised is buried in my body now, just waiting for a chance to put it on display.

Next to me, my best friends are holding hands, taking turns spinning the other around in sloppy pirouettes. My eyes unfocus, and the lips of everyone in my general vicinity transform into strange, rouge-colored butterflies, catching tricks in the light. The only pair of heels I had that went with my thrift store dress are a pair of silver diamond heels from my high school prom, years ago. Both straps disintegrated and snapped on the short walk from my dorm to the campus center, so they’re kicked off under the table somewhere out of this glittering sphere of existence.

The music shifts into a broody love song, and I sink into the relieving arms of my boyfriend, his face holding the memory of worry behind all the laughter lines. I tuck my chin into the notch of his shoulder, nodding against the rhythm as if to plead my case that I’m okay. A part of my world shattered off back home, and grief is gritting and horrible, but here, right in this tiny moment on the dance floor, I can compartmentalize.

I don’t know it yet, but this is the memory I’ll keep frozen like a snow globe in my mind, a moment of joy before everything else began to break apart. I’m on my tiptoes, calloused and strong, rocking back and forth to the gentle, endearing sway of the song.

Outside, it’s February, and the Pennsylvania ground is frozen clean through. Above us, out of my sight, is the twinkling of a billion stars that have either burned out or inevitably will. But when the music picks up in tempo, I don’t pay attention to anything but the beat, letting my hips undulate, feeling the rhythm reverberate through my body like muscle memory. For hours, we dance, hands laced together, following flocking patterns to let each of us have a second in the spotlight. When it’s my turn, I don’t say anything. I just smile, feel the music, and for a fleeting, starry second, I can postpone all of my grief.

Tomorrow is waiting, but I’m becoming my own supernova right here on the dance floor—a story of survival long after the world’s stopped turning.