There’s a song he sent you in a YouTube link. He texted it several times over the last year so you know it’s one of his drunken go-tos. This intense bass line winds all through it and makes your body move of its own accord though you know that he never really liked dancing (and what kind of human hates dancing? How would you let yourself end up with someone like that?). It’s the lyrics that hold the magic for him, those words that often go in one ear and out the other for you, wrapped as they are in all of these textures scientifically designed to make you move.

And you’re moving, knees shimmying softly back and forth—your hips following suit—and you are trying, trying to hear it the way he does—the quiet torment he feels underneath the pulse. You are trying. But that beat, that sweet and inescapable rhythm, takes you like it does every time. You are transported and you are moving, moving so far away from him.

C.C. Russell’s

poetry and prose are published in such journals as The Meadow, New York Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Split Lip Magazine, and Whiskey Island among others. His work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and for Best of the Net, and will be included in Best Microfiction 2020. He lives in Wyoming with a couple of humans and several cats.

Author’s website: ccrussell.net