School Dance

In a slip of shadow under the table

Ella and I were squeezed together

and that was good, tight was good,

because pieces of me were fluttering away with the noise.

We shared sugar hearts and chocolate strawberries

and let the legs of the table dig into us.

I kept trying to scrape

the smell of scented sanitizer

off on my pants leg;

she kept twirling her ring;

the dance floor kept bouncing, bouncing,

staticy songs creaking, floating in the sea of stomps

until I couldn’t hear my own six-year-old laugh

at the nonsense and absolute sense

of candy under the table.

(This is for Joseph Harker’s twenty-fifth Renovations prompt. http://namingconstellations.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/renovation-twenty-five-prospect-park/)