Rapid Rapid,

At the end of a piece of music ending in a slow movement, when the final held note is unheld and gives way to silence but before the applause, breaths are drawn, awaiting closure, milliseconds before the first clap, before the entirety of what has just been heard hits all at once.

Before a waltz, standing straight and tense, before muscles soften, before body weight melts into the flow of the music, before the spine uncoils its rhythm, before all that there is balance, a view over the edge of a cliff.

A poem that sounds too familiar which is read and then forgotten, its meaning too fearful.

Before climax, before the moment when suddenly a renewed pressure of two bodies together, tensity hanging in the air above the bed and under the sheets, hovering, fusing upward in an embrace of more than arms, before the crush of softness flush against one another in ecstatic poise.