There was Rebecca, and Stephanie, and the blonde—what was her name? We were sitting there outside Le Politique on a cool Spring day sharing a bottle of rosé with you, Lucy.

Rebecca was oft too hungover to dance, it’s no wonder she abdicated without further grandeur to greener pastures on her Sunday afternoons. Stephanie had her baby, and then another, life got full. The blonde—what was her name?—she was a dance teacher, simply brushing up her ballet. They were never making a commitment. I was the only one who saw it as a beginning of something rather than an interim. And that’s always been my problem, I can’t enjoy things for what they are right now without keeping a little finger on forever. It’s only good in this moment if there’s some promise of the future.

They all left me somewhere in 2019, somewhere in a Spring whose chill I remember like a good bite of food. Somewhere before we were told in the lone studio still lit that we didn’t know what would happen tomorrow, before tomorrow came and the studio closed and the world never looked quite the same again. It’s been 4 years since I stood in that moment with 3 people who had no illusions about what they were doing. I’ve lived in that illusion ever since.

It’s no wonder I came back from a hard year and struggled to find the shape of myself. No wonder the idle chatter of new dancers felt like a cool front moving in. No wonder the air no longer felt charged, but stagnant, like I was barging my way through it to get to the other side.

It was just a projection, whose passion and potential was anchored in the place from which it was cast. Just a vision of a chartreuse Spring being forced to play out on a bleak stage. How did I somehow appoint you all in some ideal in which I was the only one privy? How did I arrive here from those nascent moments?

I’m surprised not to hear from you. There’s certainly the prospect that you felt the depth of these 5 years same as I, that resolving yourself to release the weight of them is as unnatural to you as it is to me. But what if it’s another faded relic of a stage show I left in the sun? What if it’s 4 years too many of directing that white light at something impressionable? One more thing I remember differently from that place where we sat at Le Politique in the Spring of 2019.