collapsing justwrite

Dance across caverns because they always told you air is too thin to hold your weight. I am a grape beneath your heel. I am ripe, swollen. My skin is splitting. In my mouth, there is juice that tastes like springtime. There are stars behind my eyelids. I can dance. In my dreams, I am losing all my teeth. Their roots slice my tongue. They fall into my cupped palms, leave gaps the size of oceans in my gums. You tell me I taste like salt. I want to bury my teeth, round white seeds, but nothing grows in this earth but thistles that tangle themselves in my hair like your fingers when you have nothing else to hold. I reach for your hand, my face to the sky. I used to stand in a half-burned house wondering if the floor would collapse. You used to dance across that floor. I told you once that birds have hollow bones, bones so light air can hold them like cupped hands hold sprouting seeds. This movement is so slight my eyes see only teeth, detached and fallen in my palm. You twirl to me, one arm around my waist, your face tilted down to the earth. You say you're dancing while we wait, and even if the floor collapses, we won't.