Madison King

The crowd is a sickening Tilt-a-Whirl, speeding around the inside of this log cabin in the backwoods of Tuolumne County. And yes, I dance in my pink fat baby boots handed down from cousin Rain. I sweat through my shirt. I am pressed into a nest of writhing, dancing bodies: the clamor of dancing, snake-like bodies pressing into me. A tall man displaces from the mass, puts his hands on my hips, lingers behind, and squeezes past, casting me forward. I grab onto my friend for balance; she grabs me back. We dance like this for a long time. A slow, cow-corn paced song plays from somewhere overhead. I mouth whispers into her shoulder, leaning down down to sing wash over me, every self I’ve ever been. She tells me about this man, Wrangler or Wheels or Weston, and leaves my arms to dance in his. I find my way to the rough wood wall, picking at the neon paint graffiti peeling away under the heat of the bodies. I step outside and I am my mother’s horse, Sierra Smoke, in the Rose Bowl Parade, steam rising off me and into the dark.