It starts slow, as these things do.

Quick, hurried glances in the same occupied spaces. Small, unsure smiles. The subtle obvious brushing of hands.

Tiny moments begin to add up, shuffling their feet towards each other. Laughing through the lunches. Finding each other in crowded rooms. Cups of coffee left at each other's desks.

The pace quickens, as lunches turn to dinners. As dinners turn to late nights. They share a cab, and then a kiss, and soon a toothbrush. Her space becomes his space.

The momentum builds, the elation fueling. Small notes of affirmation are left around her apartment. Surprise dinners and weekend gateways. Heads on shoulders, shared blankets, limbs tangled under sheets.

They are spinning madly, deeply, into each other. And this is when tiny fissures begin to show.

A miscommunicated moment turns to rage. Broken glass coated in crimson paints the living room floor.

The music vibrates through them, their feet uncontrollably moving back to each other. They wrap one another in their arms. A promise of never again. A tearful acknowledgement. But not an apology. 

They are dancing anew, over the stained floor and broken glass, its shards piercing their feet.

A reminder. To her.

There is a note and a gift upon her pillow. An offering to keep dancing, forever. 

An ensemble of others to celebrate with them, encircling them into the beginning of their vows.

To have, to hold, in sickness, in anger. To always dance, together.

And so they do.

They dance.

His space was never hers.

They dance.

And they break at his hands. On her knees.

They dance.

And he comforts her until she forgets.

They dance.

A memory and flash of life before.

They dance.

He drowns her.

She comes up for air, with scrapes and blistered feet. Only to be pulled back under.

They dance.

Her soul shatters a little bit on each new number.

And as he twirls her back into him, gravity shifting from under her feet, he steadies her.

Only to let her fall back down again. The collision of pavement and head shift something.

She remembers.

His behaviour she learned, his pattern she memorized.

She believed in him to continue the dance. And so when he spins her into his arms, her back against him, she remembers.

Even as he curses at her, she remembers.

“I trust you,” she says as his knife points to her throat. As he grips her close. As the tip of the knife scrapes her ever so subtly, she remembers.

Because every blistered heel, every flinched movement, every scar upon her body, led her to remember. Who she was. What was stripped from her.

She took every shattered piece of herself, every shard of broken glass, and engulfed it in her molten, red hot sorrow forging it into her own blade.

Because even though she trusted him, trusted him to not stray from their choreographed life, he shouldn’t have trusted her.

To use her pain and weaponize it.

He’s not the only one with a knife but he is the only one shimmering in red tonight.

They sway together, one last waltz, one final number, before he falls.

The final note rings out, as her blade soaked in blood hits the floor.

She remembered.