dance dance revolution
long weekend ← or ← perhaps ↑ summer holiday →
from the back of someone’s car boot ↑ the strange →
sweated plastic all pink and blue and folded →
arrows stacked and pointing towards themselves↓
like meeting for the first time ← or ← reuniting →
and holding ↑ the air of what must’ve been an upset child ↓
→ we ← were young enough to fall when → we ← ran →
too quickly ↑ our bodies eager to move us on ↓
didn’t ← I → say it was much harder than it looked →
↑ you ↓ tried dancing with just one leg ↑ the other →
anchored to the mat like ↑ you ↓were scared →
↑ you ↓ might be asked to move ← or ← asked to leave ↓ ↓
Callan Waldron-Hall is a Liverpool-based writer. His pamphlet, learning to be very soft, won the Poetry Business 2019 New Poets Prize and is published by Smith|Doorstop. His poems have appeared in Magma, The Rialto and The North.