by Luna Dragon Mac-Williams

(after Terrance Hayes)

As soon as this all is over, I can’t wait to have dance parties again.
Just like this. My mom said, and my dad pulled her in close. It was
10:32 on a Sunday night and the blue light bulb he screwed in
tight was leaking liquid mercury on our white-tile dining room floor.
Not actually. Let me begin again. Sergio Mendez and Ciara.
Michael Jackson and Roy Ayers. Don Omar and Daddy Yankee.
Sean Paul and a DJ called Spiller. Chanteuses and crooners
crowding that track that never got credit for voices that haunt these
Chicago house-built houses. I unscrew myself and let my elbows fly.
I think, you could track a lifetime in songs stuck on repeat. Hermanita
next to me, all bones and limbs and lithe aliveness, says, this is why
I love this family. Ma and Pa forget the fight they’ll probably have
later, let love bubble up without catching in their throat, let their
bodies catch light from the other’s smile, and I see the couple who
kicked off the floor, so they always say, at every club, every party,
and I see where I get my abandon. At 11:11 I wish for a lifetime of
impromptu dance parties. Let me begin again. At 11:11 I wish for
a world of dance parties. Let me begin again. At 11:11 I wish for a
dance party so good it deconstructs self-interest. For a groove to
catch, a beat to drop, and it all to shake down okay. With this verse,
my mama praises the patients she’ll wake up and take to tomorrow.
With this chorus, my dad pushes back the attacking signs that he
might have colon cancer (?). With this bridge, hermanita says, I
miss this when we go too long without. I spin her like we learned in
dance. My dad says, you could be twins. He says, Luna, you could
lead those cha-cha lessons on cruise ships. My hips, boyish but
heartbreaking, laugh. Tracks later, Pa trickles off y hermanita
también, and Ma and I are belting about twenty-something sadnesses
she hasn’t grappled with in some time but I’m wading my way through
presently. Between taking her hair down and kicking off her shoes
she says, baby, you deserve the world, and I almost miss it.
If I get this world, I will bring it back to her.


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Luna Dragon Mac-Williams is a playwright, poet, actor, dancer, jeweler, editor, educator, and undergraduate student at Wesleyan University. She is a proud Chicagoan, born and raised. Her one-act, “Good Strong Coffee,” premiered at Chicago Dramatists through Pegasus Theater in winter 2018. She has recently been published in Ariel’s Dream. She believes in sweet coffee, wishing at 11:11, and helping youth honor and share their personal narratives.