'This is a thin slice in time...

If you know what you're going to do next, don't do it', Nita Little 

Bodies are scattering across the space 

Cellular forms swimming in a microscope

Tuned and orchestrated by plucking strings

Our arms join together like notes of music 

Only a body blind of knowing knows its sound 

The entry point a sway of loosening bones 

What I have come to know is strange 

That I can doubt myself far too often 

There's a room I go to where all is doubt 

From its walls I sometimes doubt you too 

And this can dredge up inside me

Gathering in corners like drifts of snow

I am watching the frozen parts of us

Unheard shoulders of hurt that turn cold 

Eyes that fear to touch the open wound

A thousand tiny windows open as we move 

Red and gold threads of sunlight seep in 

Coloured birds and the smell of flowers

Deeper into the dance we go and it is wind 

A gusty breeze that lifts the snow into flakes 

Melting them in all our little doorways of skin 

If we had never opened those windows 

I would never have learnt to feel belief

To trust your blood dear friend and hold you 

I would never have learnt to let you go

To understand that you are also snow 

Also once crystallised in that invisible place 

Into the dance we go and we are now water 

The parts that are melted circling back round

To carry the parts in us that are still hard 

Look how we become part of that stream 

How the heart's hinges have been freed

How we are all borne by the flow of the river 

I sometimes still disappear into walls of doubt

But these embraces are a compass in the dark 

And step by step we learn the wisdom of skin

This poem was inspired by my recent experience of Contact Improvisation dance practice in the incredible Emerging Hearts summer camp and community, exploring a journey through self-doubt into revelation.
Paintings by Marina Krasnitskaya