you'd never learned to dance,
And I believed your quiet stance.
You said the rhythm passed you by,
Like every beat would simply die.
But people don't move the way you do,
Like every note belongs to you.
Nobody turns a silent space
Into a wild, unveiled embrace.
I watched you longer than I should,
To understand the ground where you stood.
Beneath the ease, within the art,
Inside the sanctuary of your heart.
I counted every beat you kept,
Every promise that never slept.
Waiting for one mistake to show,
One place where certainty would go.
I watched you for so long, so long,
Your footsteps slowly became my song.
Now I know every turn you make,
Every smile you learned to fake.
I learned the beauty in your grace,
The hidden wars beneath your face.
And the hardest truth I ever knew:
How to leave... before the end of view.
There was nothing left to find,
Only years written between the lines.
And God, the way you crossed the floor,
Like you'd been there a thousand times before.
You called yourself a novice soul,
Yet every movement knew its role.
It takes a special kind of pain
To disappear and still remain.
Yes, it takes a special kind of pain...
I watched you for so long, so long,
Your footsteps slowly became my song.
Now I know every turn you make,
Every smile you learned to fake.
I learned the beauty in your grace,
The hidden wars beneath your face.
And the hardest truth I ever knew:
How to leave... before the end of view.
The crowd will rise. The crowd will cheer.
The crowd will think the ending's clear.
They'll see the dancer dressed in white,
But not the shadow out of sight.
They'll hear the music, soft and low,
But not the ache beneath the show.
I watched you for so long, so long,
Your footsteps still live in my song.
Now look at your student standing here,
Wearing everything you left me to bear.
A ballerina dressed in blue,
Dancing the way you taught me to.
You played the first note years ago,
I'll play the last before I go.
And when the final curtain falls,
When silence answers all the calls,
What will remain is not the dance...
But the deep abyss
Of our first chance.
Mcz