HEY MICKEY

OH MICKEY YOU'RE SO FINE, YOU'RE SO FINE, YOU BLOW MY MIND, HEY MICKEY.

Her little legs, rainbow striped leggings and all, move her swiftly around the living room. Everything is happening right now. Why wait to live? She twirls and twirls and twirls. She dances around and around on the huge rugged oval blue carpet, to which she is tiny in comparison.

This rug is her stage; the world is her audience.

The warm light gleaming through the fingerprint-smudged door,
the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen,
the excitingly abrasive feel of her tiny soft feet meeting the rough carpet for fractions of a second at a time;
it's all part of her performance.

Everything is her audience, everything is part of her act.

OH MICKEY, YOU'RE SO PRETTY, CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND? IT'S GUYS LIKE YOU MICKEY! OH WHAT YOU DO MICKEY, DO MICKEY. DON'T BREAK MY HEART MICKEY.

This song is the anthem of her existence. It moves her, breathes life into her, charges her with some unknown and previously unchanneled energy.

Who cares what the words mean? Right now, she struggles to write even her name on a piece of paper without writing the "a" backwards. Words don't need to mean too much yet. She'll have plenty of time to get caught up in those later.

Right now, she lives. Alive in the music, she lives fully, completely, unapologetically.

OH MICKEY WHAT A PITY, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. YOU TAKE ME BY THE HEART WHEN YOU TAKE ME BY THE HAND.

Her mother, relentlessly scrubbing a casserole dish in the kitchen, takes a break and smiles at the living room scene as she takes it in. She looks at her daughter. Her blonde, stringy hair is wild as it suspends in the air. She moves deliberately, with no self-awareness at all. She dances fearlessly, unconscious of her audience. Nothing is held back. Perhaps she knows her mom is there watching, perhaps she doesn't. It does not matter to her either way. She is alive.