An Easy Escape
A liquid savior shakes her body loose, hair flipping over to swat and stick in the sweat of bodies closing in. He swallows her breath and blows it round the dance floor with a slide and a shuffle and a smooth-talking style. Latched on, moving together, ignoring sweat that cascades down taut biceps and across an elegant collarbone. She stopped feeling her feet an hour ago. A minty tease escaping from his exhausted lungs to lure her in closer. She smiles at the other girls, for once knowing they’re no threat No one is. She’s got the moves: showing some skin, fending off lurkers, accepting drink after drink offered up with a wink and a hand’s quick acquaintance. Body heat sweeps across the floor over liquids of questionable hygiene swirling up into a speed of thrashing bodies. Its warming flushes her skin, further fueled by fiery flashes every time that shot glass crashes into the counter and limes meet their fate.
The exams are done, not to be remembered tonight. Or the next night. Or until posted results can no longer be ignored. Books once piled up in a fortress have now scattered from her consciousness. The highlighter ink has fled her skin, replaced with a bragging stamp mocking the line outside being bit by the brutal wind, hoping to gain entry. The bottle is her hero this time. It pulls her from the library shelf, dusts her off and sends her out into the world. Blow off some steam, relax the dream, more to the world that it would seem. And she’s dancing.
The hard-hitting floor mushrooms out to the bar. Awareness starts to show its face — it must be subdued. Numb more now than ever before, the weight of failing grades awaiting their reveal is extinguished. Lights burn her line of vision and it is back to the pot of bodies pulsing in time like a cardiac muscle. Ears ring ignored. Anything could be on the table tonight, not just her and her stripper heels. A pill passes into her wandering palm. She pops it.
