How easy to envy the lovers their liquid sway and fascination, the way a crowd disappears behind them and time suspends itself and even light seem to bow humbly in their direction. How faultless the dance looks from here, your own legs cagey and uncertain, though you remember, still, the body's fierce loyalty to another, how a heart can stretch past all odds. Something has collapsed in you - hope, you'd call it. That's what it feels like when the music swells and no one's reaching for your hand. So you sink, deflated, to the shadows of your seat and say to yourself, This is what loneliness is, until the last note leaves the room and you reach for your own.