WEBVTT

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"My Mother, If She Had
Won Free Dance Lessons."

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"Would she had been a person
with a completely different

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outlook on life?

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There are times when
I visit and find

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her settled in a chair
in our dilapidated house.

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The neighborhood
crazy lady, doing

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what the neighborhood crazy
lady is supposed to do,

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which is absolutely nothing.

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And I wonder as we talk our
sympathetic talk, abandoned

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in easy dialogue.

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I, the son of the crazy lady.

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Who crosses easily
into her point of view

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as if yawning or
taking off an overcoat.

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Each time I visit, I
walk back into our lives.

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And I wonder, like any
child who wakes up one day

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to find themselves
abandoned in a world

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larger than their bad dreams.

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I wonder as I see my
mother sitting there,

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landed to the right hand
window in the living room.

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Pausing from time to time the
endless loop of our dialogue.

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The peek for rascals
through the Venetian blinds.

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I wonder a small thought.

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I walk back into our lives.

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Given the opportunity,
how would she have danced.

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Would it have been as easily
as we talk to each other now?

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The crazy lady, and
the crazy lady's son.

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As if we were old friends
from opposite coasts,

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picking up the thread
of a long conversation,

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or two ballroom dancers
who only know one step.

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What would have changed if the
phone had rung like a suitor?

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If the invitation had
arrived in the mail

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like Jesus extending a hand."