A note about the missing voice

The Scholar isn't here.

Usually, I let her follow behind me. I feel something first, she takes it apart, and together we figure out which parts can survive being looked at too closely.

Not this time.

Take Aim has spent years being something I could examine without understanding why I couldn't finish it. Then the perspective moved, and suddenly I wasn't examining it anymore.

I was in it.

There will be time to count the beats. To diagram the grammar. To ask what the text can actually support and make sure I haven't mistaken recognition for evidence.

But doing that now would change the thing I'm trying to preserve.

So the Scholar was not invited to this one.

This is not an argument for what Take Aim means.

It is a record of what happened when I finally heard it from somewhere else.

Madwoman gets to finish the dance before anyone explains the steps.

The Madwoman

I didn't realize Take Aim was a waltz at first. Which is strange, because apparently my body did.

I heard the three meter before I thought to count it. I could feel where the movement wanted to go before I stopped long enough to ask why.

Then I asked two other musicians what they heard. Just to make sure I wasn't imagining it.

A waltz.

Fuck.

Because that changed the shape of the room.

There are things your body understands before you do. A rhythm you fall into without counting it. You don't need to know where the one is. You don't need to know what your feet are doing. You just know where to step. And I knew where to step. I always know where to step. I've known for years.

Three beats.
A dance built for two people.

And suddenly there was another body in the room.

Or maybe there always had been.

That's the problem.

Because once I could see the dance, I started waiting for something I was certain had to happen. I waited for it to break.

There is a point near the end where everything in the speaker seems to change. He sounds stronger. He stops pleading quite the same way. He starts telling us what he will do.

Here.

This is where you stop dancing. This is where you finally plant your feet. This is where the song tears itself out of three and runs.

It doesn't.

I kept listening for it.
It doesn't.

The dance never stops.

And I couldn't figure out why that bothered me so much.

There is weaponry in this song.

I have known that forever too.
I just didn't see it for what it was. Which sounds ridiculous now.

It is right fucking there.

How you love like weapons kill.

How you love. How weapons kill.

I don't know what the sentence is asking me to put between those things.
I only know that it puts them beside each other.

And then he requests:

Aim at me.
For once.

For once.

I used to hear the enormity of that.

Love me catastrophically.
Love me violently.
Love me enough to destroy me.

There is something almost mythic about loving like a weapon kills.

Until there isn't.
Until you notice someone sharpening the arrows.

And then hindsight does the cruel thing hindsight does.
It doesn't change a single moment.

It just hands you back your memories with different subtitles.

I was talking to a friend about the waltz. About the trust of it. The balance. The constant adjustment to another person's body.

About how strange it was that this song kept dancing even when everything inside it seemed to be falling apart. And she said something that made the entire song turn over in my hands.

You thought you were learning the steps to a dance when really you were dodging the arrows the whole time.

Fuck.

Because those movements can look exactly the same from inside them.

Step.
Turn.
Adjust.
Recover.

Again.

You learn how far something reaches. You learn when it's coming. You learn which way to move. You learn how quickly you need to recover before the next one. You get so fucking good at it that eventually you don't even think you're dodging. You think you're dancing.

And if you've been doing it long enough?
Maybe you don't know what dancing with someone feels like.
Maybe you only know what it feels like to become exquisitely responsive to them.

Those aren't the same thing.

I don't think I knew that.

And then I got stuck on for once.

Because he isn't asking the weapon to go away. He is asking it to point at him.

For once.

And I hate how much sense that can make from the wrong place. Because there is something that being targeted and being chosen have in common.

Someone has to see you.

They have to know where you are.
They have to orient themselves toward you.

For one terrible second, you are unquestionably the object of someone's attention.

There is a line between you.

Maybe you don't know that a line can be something other than a trajectory. Maybe nobody has ever held out their hand and waited for yours. Maybe what you know is the arrow. So when you want someone to choose you, you don't ask them to dance.

You ask them to aim.

And then he tells them they know.

That's the part I can't get away from now.

Not I hope.
Not maybe.
Not even simply I will.

You know.

You know what I will be when the moment finally comes.
You know I will still be here.
You know I will become yours.

How the fuck does he know what they know?

I don't know.

Maybe they really do. Maybe this has happened enough times that everybody knows their steps. Maybe that's what makes the certainty so awful.

I don't know.
I don't want to know yet.

I just know how different it sounds when you realize the person saying it is still dancing.

Because that's what I kept missing.
He gets louder.
He gets stronger.
He tells us what he will do.
He will fire.
He will run.

For a moment it sounds like agency.

Like finally moving.
But will is a promise about somewhere you haven't reached yet.

And underneath it:

one two three
one two three
one two three

Still dancing.

Still leaving room for the other body. Still moving as though someone might take the place that has been waiting for them this entire time. And maybe that's why this song has been sitting in my throat for so long.

I was waiting for him to leave.

I thought if I listened closely enough I would find the moment when he stopped dodging and walked out of range.

There isn't one.

The song ends before he gets there.

I don't think Take Aim changed for me.

I think I did. And now I can look backward and see something I couldn't see while I was moving.

The arrows were always there. They didn't appear when I noticed them. They didn't become arrows because somebody hurt me. They didn't stop being romantic because I became cynical.

I just finally know that there is a difference between someone adjusting their body because another person is dancing with them... and someone adjusting their body because something is coming at them.

From inside the movement, maybe you can't always tell.
Especially if no one ever taught you another dance.
Especially if being hit was sometimes the only proof you had that someone knew where you were.

So you learn the steps.
You become very, very good at them.
And one day someone watches you move and tells you what you've actually been doing.

And suddenly you realize:
There was never a partner holding your hand.

You were just very good at staying in time.
And the worst fucking part?
The music is still playing.

One.
Two.
Three.

The Witness

She didn't stop the music. She didn't take the arrow away. She only noticed that they had been in the room together all along.

The dance was still a dance.
The weapon was still a weapon.
Neither had changed.

She had.

There are things we learn only after we have survived being wrong about them. Not because we were foolish. Because from inside a pattern, adaptation can feel remarkably like participation.

You move when something moves toward you. You learn its timing. You anticipate where it will land. Eventually, your body knows what to do before you know why you are doing it. From the outside, perhaps it looks like choreography. From the inside, perhaps it feels like love. And sometimes it takes standing somewhere new to understand the difference.

She can see it now.

Not what the song means.
Not who held the weapon.
Not whether there was ever another dancer.

Only this:

The steps were real.
So were the arrows.