And the sun is above and it is yellow and we begin dancing, dancing on the surface of the room, its interior blistering and dry and the floor coughing up brown dust. And I take your hand in mine and you take hers and she takes the hand of the body we have found there in the room and the body we found takes the hand of the body it has found, perhaps exhumed from underneath the parched and cracked floor of the room. I always begin, right foot crossing left, left stepping back, right crossing again, and I pull you by the arm and your feet follow mine and you pull her and her right foot crosses over her left, left back and right across again and she yanks the arm of the body she has found and the body’s feet follow, its right crossing its left, left back and it pulls the body it has found, the one exhumed, and exhumed body’s feet start sluggish and plodding like dancing in a slow slow dream. The exhumed holds my hand in his and his hand is covered in mud and the heat from the sun that burns in the corner of the room has dried the mud and it feels like dried blood and the feel of it makes me thirsty so I dance faster to forget the thirst. Around and around, our circle of bodies circling and our feet crisscrossing and our mouths singing the words to the song in this room: they came to the river and they came to the road and they wanted the sun just to call it their own. And behind these words is an accordion playing, always an accordion, all of our lives we have been deciphering its message. The room has neither a river nor a road. The room is square and vast. The room has an infinite sky. There are bodies underneath the floor of the room and also above it. And there is also the sun. Some us came from below the room and some of us from above it. What I mean is that we fell from the sky of the room, from some place above the room we do not recall. The others were dug up from beneath the floor. Those who fell from the sky do not recall the place above the room and those who were exhumed do not recall their burial periods. Throw your pain in the river, throw your pain in the river, throw your pain in the river, to be washed away. There are things I do remember, but they are only shadows. The body exhumed stops its dancing and we all stop with it and raise our arms to the infinite sky of the room. Throw your pain in the river, throw your pain in the river, throw your pain in the river, to be washed away! The sun burns down on me with desire. The sky is white with sun rays. I cannot look at it for too long. I am thirsty. The body’s arms are covered in dried rivulets of mud. Was the mud wet once? There are things we remember, but they are only shadows, shapes, sensations without meaning yet. A long wet line. It was wet, that we know, it came from under the ground, it is beneath there somewhere running underneath all of us, it is our mother. The river created the mountains in the distance and the branches that poke like bones from the hard ground. I pull the body’s arm, it is it trapped in the sky now, take firm hold of its hand and tug it back into the dance. This is how we are all born, through the dance. Some want to return to the ground, others to the sky, but we must remain here in the room, together. They say there was a place outside of the room, and the people who lived in that place were wanderers. And they wanted a home. But there was no home. The people wanted too much. They loved too much. They wanted to belong to the place. Not like us. We are the dead. Our desires are few. And we followed the river. And we followed the road. And we walked through this land. And we called it a home. But he wanted the sun and I wanted the whole. And the white light scatters and the sun sets low. I am so very thirsty. The accordion slows. I stop the dance. I drop the hand of the exhumed. And I turn to you and I take you in my arms and my mouth finds yours and I drink from you, long deep gulps, my fingers in your hot hair for a long time. Throw your pain in the river, throw your pain in the river, throw your pain in the river, to be washed away. And they dance around us, she and the body she found, and the exhumed, its right foot crossing its left, left stepping back, quickly now, faster and faster, like the circular sun.