crying on the dancefloor

in real life, my adolescence did not unfold gently. it was shaped by grooming long before i understood what that word meant. desire arrived tangled with power, secrecy, distortion. there was no clean first love arc. no cinematic growth. just something that blurred too quickly.

so i wrote a version that did not happen.

this text belongs to that parallel timeline. the one where i meet a boy at fifteen and we build something clumsy and sincere. the one where we break up for good at nineteen for ordinary reasons. and three years later, at twenty-two, i see him again in a club thick with heat and bass and fluorescent light.

i am aware of the drama. i am aware of the neon. i am aware that this reads like the scene before the closing credits. but sometimes fiction is the only place you can stage the grief you never got to live properly. this is not a memory. it is a reconstruction. a way of staging the heartbreak i never got to experience at the right age, in the right order. a way of letting twenty-two year old me confront a ghost that fifteen year old me was never allowed to fully have.

in this universe, i almost do not go to the club. in this universe, i watch him dance with someone else. in this universe, i learn that time does not heal everything, it just teaches the wound better manners.

these texts are not confessions. they are counterfactual tenderness. they are what ifs dressed as memory.

and in this one, the bass is loud enough to drown a twenty-two year old version of me who is still learning how to let go.

it’s a long ride. i hope you have snacks.

i almost did not go.

all afternoon my body carried a siren beneath the skin,
a red animal pacing behind my sternum,
throwing itself against bone
as if it could bruise a warning into me.
every time i checked the clock
my mouth filled with the taste of copper,
like i had bitten down on a coin and decided to swallow it.

but it was the third time i had cancelled on sarah,
and guilt has a perfume of its own,
powdery and suffocating,
clinging to the collar
long after you think you’ve washed it out.
i could not send another message shaped like cowardice.
so i dressed for the execution.

three years.

three cycles of summer sweat and winter frost.
three anniversaries that passed like quiet funerals.
three years since you stopped being the boy
whose growth i measured against my own.

you were my first confession,
my first promise spoken with a shaking mouth,
my first fracture that did not close correctly.
and in three years,
i had learned how to function around it,
like someone walking on a foot that healed crooked.

i told myself you would not be there.
the city is enormous, i told my friends.
there are enough streets for avoidance to become an art form.
i knew you were with someone new.
i had scrolled past photographs of you,
your hand resting at a waist that was not mine,
and i trained my face to remain neutral
as if indifference were a language i could master.

meanwhile, i kept offering myself to men
who smelled of stale cologne and unfinished apologies.
men who mistook damage for depth.
i let them kiss me in kitchens that reeked of burned oil,
in bedrooms where the sheets carried other names.
each time i told myself this was progress.
each time my heart fractured along the same old fault line.

the club was a furnace.

heat pressed against my cheeks,
slick and relentless.
bodies collided and recoiled,
fabric sticking to fabric,
sweat turning every touch into something almost animal.
the air tasted of vodka,
citrus rind,
and something chemical
that bloomed at the back of my tongue
like a synthetic flower.

light sliced the room into violent colors.
violet. acid green. electric blue.
they strobed across faces until everyone looked unreal,
as if we were all temporary projections on a trembling wall.

i lost sarah within minutes.
lost the group.
lost the small anchor of familiarity.

so i let the bass devour me.

it entered through my feet,
climbed my calves,
settled inside my chest and began rearranging my pulse.
liquor warmed my throat,
spread outward like a reckless blessing.
something else moved through my bloodstream,
turning every nerve into exposed wiring.

i danced as if motion could cauterize memory.
hips reckless.
arms raised.
eyes closed.
if i dissolved into rhythm,
perhaps there would be nothing left to recognize you with.

for a while i felt almost invincible.
the world reduced to heat and velocity.
my skin hypersensitive,
every brush of a stranger’s palm a spark against gasoline.

then the crowd shifted.

a pocket opened in the mass of bodies,
a brief clearing like parted curtains.
and through it, you appeared.

your curls were damp, clinging to your forehead.
sweat traced the curve of your neck,
gathering at your collarbone
before disappearing beneath your shirt.
your face glowed, flushed and alive,
eyes bright with a kind of ease
i had once prayed to witness forever.

you did not see me.

you were dancing with him.

he was pressed against you,
chest to chest,
your hands resting at the small of his back
with an intimacy that made my stomach drop.
he resembled a memory of me,
softer around the mouth,
same nervous tilt of the head.
you do have a pattern.
you always reach for familiarity dressed in a different name.

the room continued in frenzy,
but something in me fell silent.

sound thinned,
as if i had been submerged in thick water.
i could see mouths moving,
feel vibrations beneath my shoes,
yet all i heard was my own pulse
crashing against the inside of my skull.

time slowed to a viscous crawl.

your fingers tangled in his hair.
his lips found the corner of your mouth.
you tilted toward him without hesitation,
as if your body had already memorized this choreography.

when you kissed him
the sight struck like a physical blow.

not dramatic.
not staged.
simply familiar.

the way your hand slid up his spine.
the way his palm curved over your hip.
the casual certainty of it.

my throat tightened until swallowing became an effort.
i tasted salt and alcohol and something feral,
like grief chewed raw.

i remained there, motionless,
a spectator to my own replacement.

light flared across your faces,
painting you in brief halos of white.
for a second you looked almost sacred,
two figures carved out of heat and breath.
their closeness felt blinding.
i had to squint as if staring into something forbidden.

how long did i watch.

long enough for my chest to begin collapsing inward.
long enough for memory to rise like smoke.

three years ago your hands knew the map of my body.
three years ago my name was the one leaving your mouth
when pleasure blurred the edges of language.
three years ago,
i believed we were constructing something permanent.

and there you were,
alive in a present that no longer contained me.

you do not know
that i still love you.

that the feeling survived distance, pride, and bad decisions.
that it fermented quietly,
turning richer and more dangerous with time.
that every man i let touch me was measured against you
and found lacking in some invisible way.

how small that sounds.
how adolescent.
to still carry you like a relic hidden beneath clothing.

i felt both predator and prey.
eyes fixed.
breath shallow.
as if watching you long enough
might bend reality back toward its former shape.

but you only drew him closer.

he whispered into your ear.
your face broke open in delight.
i remembered that expression.
how it used to follow something i had said.

jealousy is not green.
it is colorless and suffocating,
like the air before a storm,
thick and charged.

my knees weakened.

i turned away before my body betrayed me completely.
tears arrived without permission,
hot and immediate,
cutting through sweat and glitter.
they tasted clean compared to the rest of the night,
like water after too much sugar.

someone bumped into me,
their sequins scraping my forearm.
the smell of spilled gin and overheated skin clung to my hair.
i moved through the crowd as if through dense foliage,
hands brushing against strangers,
their heat indifferent to my collapse.

i reached the exit and pushed outside.

the night air struck my face, cold and merciless.
it carried the scent of asphalt and distant rain,
of cigarettes crushed under impatient heels.
i bent forward, palms braced against my thighs,
breathing as if i had surfaced from deep water.

inside, through the vibrating walls,
the bass continued its assault.
you were still in there.
still touching him.
still building a life that did not include me.

i pressed my fingers to my lips
as if they might remember yours.

three years,
and the wound had only learned sophistication.
it no longer screamed.
it whispered.
it waited for rooms like this.

i thought time would turn you into something manageable.
a story told over wine.
a photograph glanced at without flinching.

instead, you are climate within me.
pervasive.
unavoidable.
altering the atmosphere of every new encounter.

for a moment i imagined walking back in.
crossing the floor.
tapping your shoulder.
watching your face rearrange in recognition.

i imagined telling you that i never stopped.
that loving you became a habit my body refused to quit.
that every attempt at moving on felt like rehearsing a lie.

but the door remained closed.

i stayed on the pavement,
tears cooling on my cheeks,
salt streams,
carving pale rivers down my overheated skin.
cars passed,
headlights grazing my face in brief interrogations.

and in that harsh glow
i understood something unbearable.

you healed.

you found a way to let joy inhabit you again.
your hands learned another body.
your mouth learned another name.

and i am still here,
three years later,
learning how to survive the sight of it
without turning to dust.

Fives songs to play while reading this poem

RED — AndrewBates
DON’T YOU (Taylor’s version, from the Vault) — Taylor Swift
GREEN LIGHT — Lorde
THE NIGHT WE MET — Lord Huron
LIABILITY — Lorde

curious for more? these ones hum in the same key.

https://lexieiswritingtoremember.substack.com/p/what-fifteen-should-have-felt-like

https://lexieiswritingtoremember.substack.com/p/we-were-glitter-before-gold

xoxo, Lexie.