Crossroads

The teacher assistant can’t really dance and yet she’s dancing. Nobody knew this was going to happen and still it feels as if it was meant to, while, don’t get me wrong, none of this should have ever occured. 

I’m standing at the crossroads of hell. 

We are locked inside a windowless white room so we can be anywhere. Any place we like, no place, not here: we choose. 

I look to the left, I look to the right. 

We shall move around, own the space and clap to the music. We shall not move in a straight line. It is ok to step away from the walls. 

There’re hands to grab me on every side. 

I translate once and then we all just start moving, grudgingly at first, bashfully. M has neither Spanish nor need for it. She has turned into something between waves and a radioactive particle splitting people up, never still, and always in the right place. I must have looked like a drunken parrot, but was too close to be sure. Stop. 

I’m trying to protect what I keep inside.

Gazes lift and limbs loosen up. There 's laughter. Time is watching, letting us steal from it. We shake and share and offer our names and moves to the group. We let ourselves be seen. Our fingers touch and the walls are so far now.

Some say the devil be a mystical thing. 

We have long left the windowless white room, located in Tapachula, Chiapas, México, Southern border, migration hot-spot. More specifically, inside a refuge for people from Central America who seek asylum.  

I’ll save my soul, save myself.