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Description
Tayla is dancing. It's nothing much, it may not seem like anything at all to the passerby, but Tayla's dancing and that's everything in the world to me.
     So come on, sit with me. Watch her twirl and slip her arms. Come sit and I'll tell you a story.
     Once upon a time, not long ago but certainly in a galaxy far far away there was a little girl. She lived.
     She lived in a house with little orange shutters and a bright yellow door. She lived with a mother and a father who loved each other very much. Loved her very much.
     But she didn't love herself at all.
     She'd sit in her room with her music up loud and think horrible thoughts about herself. She'd sit with a knife and scratch her hands, lightly, lightly.
     And then she'd come to school and tell me all about it.
     To have your best friend dying and there being nothing you can do about it. It's horrible.
     To have your best friend willing herself dying and there being nothing you can do is worse.
     To have your daughter killing herself in the next room and ignoring it for the sake of her privacy? The worst.
     But her parents wouldn't weren't doing anything. She said it meant that they didn't really love her. I knew if they'd tried to help that she'd say they were crowding her, didn't respect her, didn't love her.
     She just didn't want to live.
     She just wouldn't live.
     And she was the best thing in my life.
     I told her I loved her.
     I said wasn't that enough?
     And she didn't believe me.
     She had crushes on the most random people and when they didn't look at her when they passed in the halls, she said she was ugly. When they did look, she said it was like the thing with the car wreck. Where you can't look away.
     I told her she was beautiful.
     I told her she was the most gorgeous creature alive, with skin like porcelain soft as buttered leather, with emerald flecks in her hazel eyes that shown brighter than any jewel, feathery hair so black it put out negative light, with quick fingers and dancing feet and the cutest toes in the world.
     She said that she was ugly, too fat, look at the jiggle, her skin was patchy and freckled, her eyes were muddy and her hair was greasy and too straight, her fingers stubby and her feet and toes callused.
     She never listened.
     One day she came all excited, the happiest look I'd ever seen on her face.
     I thought she was all better.
     That she'd woken up and the world was wonderful again.
     She dragged me to a corner and rolled up her sleeve and unwound an ace bandage from her arm and showed me what she'd done last night. A cut so wide and deep that she would have needed stitches if she'd shown anybody but me.
     She was so proud. She said she was getting braver. She said that soon she might finally be able to do it. End it. The look on her face was serene.
     I wanted to puke. I wanted to run away and cry. But I didn't. I couldn't leave her side because I thought I still might save her.
     I grabbed her not-cut arm, and pulled her down the hall, out of the school. In that moment I was so scared and mad and angry that my brain just peaked and over-loaded and fuck class, fuck tests, fuck attendance records and skip calls, I needed to make my friend better. I needed to show her that life was worth living, that it was worthy of her living.
     So I dragged her to my car and she got in, not worried at all, because she was so certain that she was so brave, that tonight would be the night. I started driving as she continued to babble about her new found courage and how glad she was that she wasn't really the wimp she'd always hated herself for being. I put on Beethoven, Mozart, brisk heavy music full of thirst for life. She quieted, content to listen, even started to hum along. As I parked I switched over to Celtic, lively and happy with flirting fiddles and lusty mandolins.
     When we got out of the car I left the door open, gave her an exaggerated bow; May I have this dance? Then we were looping and tapping, but my feet were so clunky-slow, I let her go twirling off on her own.
     So she danced, Shiva-incarnate, like the earth was speaking up into her feet and making her an element of her own, a blending of earth and air, water and fire, everything in the world condensed into one body, one being.
     And when she stopped, slinking back to me tired and smiling, I hugged her and kissed her head and told her she was holy. She laughed at me.
     I took her hand and led her along through the meadow by the lake near my house, to the little half-path that I'd spent my childhood running down.
     I took her along under the leaning willows, through the thickets of scrawny beeches, past idealic fishing spots and swimming holes, over fallen-log bridges. We froze for rabbits and sleepy-eyed deer, watched squirrels argue saw the tail end of a fox. I showed her my old tree-fort. And finally we got to the place, the secret place that I'd been saving for forever.
     Through some scratchy thorns and up a slightly slippy hill, we arrived and the sun was just right, across form us, not directly above and slightly shadowing. The birds were singing a background music litany and the bees were buzzing merrily around a great field of wild flowers. It was the place that I'd sat as a little boy, dreaming of standing there with a girl just like the one that stood with me now.
     We rolled in the flowers and ate blackberries that stained our hands and mouths; laid in the grass and made crowns out of flowers. Tackled each other and wrestled under the setting sun.
     As we walked back around the lake, watching the sunset, she snaked her arm around my waist and I thought that she was fixed now. That a blood transfusion of lake air and flowers had driven the dark-death out of her.
     When we were back at the car, she leaned in and kissed me like all I'd ever wanted.
     Then she whispered in my ear, I don't want to die a virgin.
     My heart broke. My soul crumbled. But...
     What do you expect of me?
     I was only human. A sixteen-year-old boy. You know the stereotypes.
     And I loved her. Loved her from the first moment I saw her.
     And I thought that maybe this, this would work and save her. That it would heal her and make her whole if I gave her more than everything that I had been planning to give.
     It works in the books. In stories, sweet joinings of lips and flesh heal anything.
     So we went back to my house, empty with my parents on a business trip and my kid sister at our aunt's.
     Even then, I held her tight through the night so she wouldn't slip away.
     Because we hadn't used protection. She wasn't planning on living past that night.
     So really, two months later, the only surprise was that she was still alive.
     I told her it was wonderful. I told her I'd do anything. She cried on my shoulder but she didn't even mention dying.
     For five months I held her and loved her and made her laugh. It was bliss, it was euphoria, it was my own personal heaven. And she smiled and didn't talk about hate or death or weak or ugly.
     She had started acting for me like she did for everybody else, and damn me, I was so happy I didn't even notice.
     Tayla was born two months early when she was taken out of her mother's dead body.
     She wasn't supposed to live through the night.
     Or the week.
     Or her first month.
     Or her first year.
     Or the next.
     And now, there she is, seven shining years old and dancing before you. My miracle and my life.
     I tell her everyday she's beautiful. I tell her everyday I love her. And though we live this small house, though we don't have nearly close to anything, I'm happy.
     Because I have Tayla. And Tayla is dancing. And that is everything.

Description
Tayla is dancing. It's nothing much, it may not seem like anything at all to the passerby, but Tayla's dancing and that's everything in the world to me.
     So come on, sit with me. Watch her twirl and slip her arms. Come sit and I'll tell you a story.
     Once upon a time, not long ago but certainly in a galaxy far far away there was a little girl. She lived.
     She lived in a house with little orange shutters and a bright yellow door. She lived with a mother and a father who loved each other very much. Loved her very much.
     But she didn't love herself at all.
     She'd sit in her room with her music up loud and think horrible thoughts about herself. She'd sit with a knife and scratch her hands, lightly, lightly.
     And then she'd come to school and tell me all about it.
     To have your best friend dying and there being nothing you can do about it. It's horrible.
     To have your best friend willing herself dying and there being nothing you can do is worse.
     To have your daughter killing herself in the next room and ignoring it for the sake of her privacy? The worst.
     But her parents wouldn't weren't doing anything. She said it meant that they didn't really love her. I knew if they'd tried to help that she'd say they were crowding her, didn't respect her, didn't love her.
     She just didn't want to live.
     She just wouldn't live.
     And she was the best thing in my life.
     I told her I loved her.
     I said wasn't that enough?
     And she didn't believe me.
     She had crushes on the most random people and when they didn't look at her when they passed in the halls, she said she was ugly. When they did look, she said it was like the thing with the car wreck. Where you can't look away.
     I told her she was beautiful.
     I told her she was the most gorgeous creature alive, with skin like porcelain soft as buttered leather, with emerald flecks in her hazel eyes that shown brighter than any jewel, feathery hair so black it put out negative light, with quick fingers and dancing feet and the cutest toes in the world.
     She said that she was ugly, too fat, look at the jiggle, her skin was patchy and freckled, her eyes were muddy and her hair was greasy and too straight, her fingers stubby and her feet and toes callused.
     She never listened.
     One day she came all excited, the happiest look I'd ever seen on her face.
     I thought she was all better.
     That she'd woken up and the world was wonderful again.
     She dragged me to a corner and rolled up her sleeve and unwound an ace bandage from her arm and showed me what she'd done last night. A cut so wide and deep that she would have needed stitches if she'd shown anybody but me.
     She was so proud. She said she was getting braver. She said that soon she might finally be able to do it. End it. The look on her face was serene.
     I wanted to puke. I wanted to run away and cry. But I didn't. I couldn't leave her side because I thought I still might save her.
     I grabbed her not-cut arm, and pulled her down the hall, out of the school. In that moment I was so scared and mad and angry that my brain just peaked and over-loaded and fuck class, fuck tests, fuck attendance records and skip calls, I needed to make my friend better. I needed to show her that life was worth living, that it was worthy of her living.
     So I dragged her to my car and she got in, not worried at all, because she was so certain that she was so brave, that tonight would be the night. I started driving as she continued to babble about her new found courage and how glad she was that she wasn't really the wimp she'd always hated herself for being. I put on Beethoven, Mozart, brisk heavy music full of thirst for life. She quieted, content to listen, even started to hum along. As I parked I switched over to Celtic, lively and happy with flirting fiddles and lusty mandolins.
     When we got out of the car I left the door open, gave her an exaggerated bow; May I have this dance? Then we were looping and tapping, but my feet were so clunky-slow, I let her go twirling off on her own.
     So she danced, Shiva-incarnate, like the earth was speaking up into her feet and making her an element of her own, a blending of earth and air, water and fire, everything in the world condensed into one body, one being.
     And when she stopped, slinking back to me tired and smiling, I hugged her and kissed her head and told her she was holy. She laughed at me.
     I took her hand and led her along through the meadow by the lake near my house, to the little half-path that I'd spent my childhood running down.
     I took her along under the leaning willows, through the thickets of scrawny beeches, past idealic fishing spots and swimming holes, over fallen-log bridges. We froze for rabbits and sleepy-eyed deer, watched squirrels argue saw the tail end of a fox. I showed her my old tree-fort. And finally we got to the place, the secret place that I'd been saving for forever.
     Through some scratchy thorns and up a slightly slippy hill, we arrived and the sun was just right, across form us, not directly above and slightly shadowing. The birds were singing a background music litany and the bees were buzzing merrily around a great field of wild flowers. It was the place that I'd sat as a little boy, dreaming of standing there with a girl just like the one that stood with me now.
     We rolled in the flowers and ate blackberries that stained our hands and mouths; laid in the grass and made crowns out of flowers. Tackled each other and wrestled under the setting sun.
     As we walked back around the lake, watching the sunset, she snaked her arm around my waist and I thought that she was fixed now. That a blood transfusion of lake air and flowers had driven the dark-death out of her.
     When we were back at the car, she leaned in and kissed me like all I'd ever wanted.
     Then she whispered in my ear, I don't want to die a virgin.
     My heart broke. My soul crumbled. But...
     What do you expect of me?
     I was only human. A sixteen-year-old boy. You know the stereotypes.
     And I loved her. Loved her from the first moment I saw her.
     And I thought that maybe this, this would work and save her. That it would heal her and make her whole if I gave her more than everything that I had been planning to give.
     It works in the books. In stories, sweet joinings of lips and flesh heal anything.
     So we went back to my house, empty with my parents on a business trip and my kid sister at our aunt's.
     Even then, I held her tight through the night so she wouldn't slip away.
     Because we hadn't used protection. She wasn't planning on living past that night.
     So really, two months later, the only surprise was that she was still alive.
     I told her it was wonderful. I told her I'd do anything. She cried on my shoulder but she didn't even mention dying.
     For five months I held her and loved her and made her laugh. It was bliss, it was euphoria, it was my own personal heaven. And she smiled and didn't talk about hate or death or weak or ugly.
     She had started acting for me like she did for everybody else, and damn me, I was so happy I didn't even notice.
     Tayla was born two months early when she was taken out of her mother's dead body.
     She wasn't supposed to live through the night.
     Or the week.
     Or her first month.
     Or her first year.
     Or the next.
     And now, there she is, seven shining years old and dancing before you. My miracle and my life.
     I tell her everyday she's beautiful. I tell her everyday I love her. And though we live this small house, though we don't have nearly close to anything, I'm happy.
     Because I have Tayla. And Tayla is dancing. And that is everything.