Panting children are at my door whose throats have left their bodies. Whose voices have left for Jesus Christ or Santa Claus or else found their way into crack pipe smoke.
The voices of a thousand children have found their way into six vibrating flamenco guitar strings. Into the cries of the mustached singer who is not singing to the audience but instead elsewhere- to that collective dust cloud from which he came. Gritando, Gritando. With the power of a thousand voices, a thousand grasping, tiny fingers enclosed on the air itself.
And the dancers twirl around, bathing themselves in their resounding echoes. Llorando. Llorando.
And they’ve lost track of the times and the year. So instead we twirl together and the folds in their dresses shine brilliantly, twirling into a reflection, turning like fish in the sea. A tornado of scales. Until all of the scales fall off of their dresses. Back to the guitar, back to the vibrational frequencies reverberating intimately between steel string and flesh.
There is a child in the face of the dancer. A child who has been trampled and has survived the stampede. A child who is still inside of us all. Like the muffled faces of Guernica. Like the echoes still crying through the paint.
The children cannot speak. They cannot cry. Their voices are trapped inside like the cancer of time. So they wait patiently at my door, eyes reflecting the brilliant, brightly colored scales of a thousand flamenco dancers.