I’m so used to filling space. I fill space with plans and work, conversation and music. A quiet space is quickly filled with people and activity. There can be an awkwardness to space.

Drawing my partner in, the music feeding our footsteps, my choreography comes to a conclusion and there she is at the end of my outstretched hand, hovering in space. An empty place. An awkward void I feel compelled to fill. I can’t leave her hanging there. I draw her in and the awkwardness follows her, it is not attached to the gulf that was between us but to the stirring and whirling in my mind that I can’t put to ease. I am in close embrace and simply moving with the steady rhythm of the music, but even this feels like a monotone, a moment I am compelled, even required to fill. A prisoner to the pressure of an over active ego.

Life calls for space. Can I stand in stillness on the inside and let go on the outside? The stillness of a west coast forest, my feet treading on silent earth. Tall trees are no strangers to resting in space. Simply being. To stand with another as though long years might pass in that moment can be more powerful than anything I can say, any movement I can express. Perhaps in this moment I can listen. Listen with every part of me from the space between the hairs on my arm and chest, to the lines on my hands and face opening up to receive what might be out there. Maybe in that space I can hear my partner’s stillness. They are not still, they are resonant. Do I have the courage to resonate? To be still but not silent? To listen. To breath.

The song ends. I am aware of the rise and fall of our chests. The space between music and movement. The fall away that leaves me standing. Still.