[Jet]

Dance #21 The Soldier

Once upon a time there was a soldier who had fought many battles.
He was wounded in battle and withdrew where he remained alone
for many years.

Then one day a beautiful woman found him. She asked him his name
and smiled at him. She began to talk to him, and as she did the soldier found himself
listening to words fall from the most beautiful voice he had ever heard.

He listened as she told him many things in the days that followed;
she had touched him deeply until finally—she drew him to herself.

The soldier felt alive and a sense of himself that he thought
had died long ago. He danced with joy.

She had drawn him away from his battles and wounds,
touching him deeply. And as the days and months passed,
he began love her with unspeakable depth.

They laughed and cried and walked and talked of many things.
And one day, she said, "Come home to me, I love you. Come home to me."

He had fallen in love with her so deeply, he asked her, "are you the one?
In his mind, he felt so sure that he had found the woman for whom he'd waited a lifetime.
"Are you the one who will kiss me goodbye for the last time?"

"Yes," she said. "I know you. I knew you the first time
I saw you. And I want you."

And so he traveled far to be with her and to begin his new life with her.
How he loved her! He would lay down his life for her, he thought,
and give her everything he could in life —
and this was only the beginning of their long life together.

And then one day, the soldier said, "I love you."

But she said nothing. She did not look at him on this day because
she did not want him.

"Why?" he asked her through his tears.

"Because of your wounds and scars," she said. "You are not the man that I want,
nor are you the man I thought you were."

"But I love you," he said, knowing that this was the beginning of the end.
He stood there waiting for her to kiss him for the last time.

She turned from him. Because it was never to be.

—The Dancer of Atlanta