The Eternal Dance
Falling Through Timelines, Towards You
L. Nathaniel Adams
Reagan Wilson
The moon peeked over the horizon just as the colors from sunset winked out of existence. They would be here soon. Just a few hours. Every night when the moon rose above the town’s short skyline and cast its reflection across the sea they appeared on the overlook. They had never harmed anyone or made trouble of any kind. In fact, when word of them started to spread tourism to Town increased. The pair was fascinating to the tourists. Mundane, now, to the locals. Tourists began heading to the overlook now with cameras and video recorders in hand sporting freshly purchased “Overlook Dancers” t-shirts. Only one local went. A gnarled and hunched old man. He went every night to watch the dance. He shuffled out and sat on the same rock he’d sat on the night before, and every night before that one for the last 20 years.
The old man began to cry silently. The dancers came near him, as they did every night. He forced himself to look at them. They were young and beautiful. The man was tall, clean shaven with a strong jawline. The woman, even now, had a gleam of intelligence in her eyes. They smiled at each other as they spun past the old man. They were bound to this town now. They would never leave like they had once dreamed. They were going to move to the city and start a business and a family, never to see anyone in this seaside town again. The old man couldn’t bear the thought of them leaving, so he did what he had to do to keep them with him forever. They still had each other, and he still had them. He wiped his joyful tears and eagerly awaited their next pass.
The air shimmered over the grassy cliff as the moon reached the designated spot. The waltz began. A salty breeze blew through the town whipping dresses and jackets. The dancing couple took no notice. Her dress flared as they spun, but they were otherwise unaffected by the elements.
50
Phoenix Magazine
You asked me if I ever think about alternate realities and branching timelines, the ones created by all our choices and mistakes. And though I always have, I think about them more often now. Who would I be if I’d let myself believe that he could want me too? If I had reached for his hand as the screen flickered, the characters’ perceptions blurring the line between reality and hallucination? As we steadied the tv against the wall, if I had said yes instead of laughing, swallowing my want in fear of being caught? If I had let him close enough to change the shape of my memories, would his lips have rewritten my story? Who would I be if I had noticed him sooner? If I had let myself see the way he always found me in a crowded room? If I had realized then what I know now? We didn’t waltz, didn’t follow any steps – we just laughed, twirled, and swayed when the music slowed, caught somewhere between childhood and whatever came next. Would we have grown up together, his hand in mine through teenage summers, his number on my back in a college stadium, cheering his name like it was always meant to be mine?
Issue 70/Spring 2025
Who would I be if we had never drifted apart? If one of us had held on tighter, if we had risked the distance, if we had let late-night phone calls and whispered promises carry us through? Would we have been high school sweethearts, counting the miles between us but never the reasons to walk away? Would I have been yours, and you mine, the way our mothers always joked we would? Would I have worn your last name as easily as I once wore your friendship, carried your love like something steady, something certain? Would we have built a life where best friends became something more, where love was something familiar instead of something I yearned for? Or were we always meant to let go, meant to become strangers who sometimes wonder? And you – who asked the question, who set these thoughts spinning – who would I be if our words had never crossed? Or would you have found me anyway, somewhere, somehow, as if we were always meant to meet? And in another life, another thread of time, did I know the shape of your hand in mine, the quiet weight of your gaze, the way your lips felt pressed against mine, the way your name became my own? Did we become something more, or were we only ever meant to be a question left unanswered? 51