Across the dark street, the dance studio
is a brilliant lamp, a Cornell box

set to music and motion: girls hold each other
in swaying pas de deux, a phrase

first translated for me as piece of God.
That’s wrong, of course,

but not entirely. For what is it to move in time
with another, to acknowledge and learn

a body beside your own—the dancing apart
and the final coming back

together—what is this if not some kind
of grace, some human-sized serving of God?