After the Parade

The music doesn’t stop all at once.

It thins.

It frays.

It becomes a vibration in the soles of my feet long after the speakers have gone silent.

Backstage smells like citrus cleaner, sweat, and fog machine residue. Glitter still clings to my collarbone. My pulse, once explosive, now descends — slow, heavy — like something lowering itself into deep water.

After the show, at the end of the day, my heart always sinks.

Not in sadness.

In gravity.

Onstage, I am voltage. A current that runs through bodies packed tight beneath lights hot enough to scorch the edges of thought. I become endless energy — laughter, hips, breathless euphoria.

But that version of me has an expiration.

The mask slips quietly.

No one ever sees it fall.

I sit on the edge of the dressing room bench and press my palms against my ribs. They feel different now — no longer armor, no longer scaffolding for spectacle. Just bone wrapped in tenderness. My body, which held itself rigid and radiant under strobes, softens into its own weight.

Ten-times-ten tender tonnes.

Someone knocks softly before entering.

You never barge in.

You lean against the doorframe first, watching as if the aftermath is part of the performance. The lights above the mirror are dimmed now, casting halos instead of interrogation beams. In their glow, smoke from a lingering stick of sage curls near my stomach where the wax from a soy candle has pooled into a soft crater.

“You’re quieter tonight,” you say.

I smile, but it’s smaller than the one I wore onstage. Realer.

“It’s the in-between,” I answer.

You understand immediately.

The crowd is gone. The cheers dissolved. Sequins folded away. What remains is the distance between inhale and exhale. The hum between heartbeats. The moment where energy stops exploding outward and begins returning inward.

You cross the room slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal. Your hand hovers at my waist before settling there — warm, steady.

Touch after performance is different.

It’s not applause.

It’s not grasping.

It’s grounding.

We leave through the back exit once the venue empties. The city air is cooler than the stage heat. My skin tightens under it, suddenly aware of its own edges. Neon reflections ripple in puddles along the sidewalk, fractured rainbows trembling beneath our steps.

You don’t speak much. You don’t need to.

The parade — the show, the spectacle — was loud enough for both of us.

Outside the city’s pulse, we lie back on the hood of your car in an empty lot that faces the open sky. The stars are faint but present, resisting the light pollution with quiet insistence.

My body finally settles.

There’s a specific kind of freedom that arrives only after intensity. Not the explosive kind. Not the kind that demands witnesses. The softer one. Vast. Liberating in its stillness.

You trace circles on my stomach where heat still lingers. It feels like you left something there earlier — a fireplace stoked too well. Coals turned embers beneath my skin.

“I can still hear them,” I whisper.

“Who?”

“The crowd.”

You tilt your head. “Or the echo of yourself?”

That lands somewhere deep.

Because what lingers isn’t just applause. It’s the version of me that existed inside it — uncontained, incandescent.

But here, in this quieter air, another version emerges.

Not smaller.

Denser.

You roll onto your side, propped on one elbow, studying me the way you do when you think I’m not looking. The disco lights are gone, but the afterimage of them flickers in my vision. Shadows from distant streetlamps stretch across us like faint stage effects.

It’s strange how the body holds memory.

The way scent clings to skin. The way sweat cools and becomes salt. The way your voice — spoken hours ago in a dressing room thick with heat — still reverberates in my chest.

Bone to bone.

Muscle to muscle.

Heartbeat to heartbeat.

You kiss my shoulder, not urgently, not hungrily. Just enough to remind my nervous system that this is real, that I am here, that I am not dissolving back into persona.

“I like this part best,” you say.

“The part where I’m exhausted?”

“The part where you’re honest.”

I laugh softly.

After the parade, there’s no choreography left. No expectation of brightness. No need to maintain orbit around anyone else’s desire.

There is only breath.

Inhale.

Exhale.

The space between.

You slide your fingers through mine, and the contact steadies something in me that still trembles from adrenaline. My synapses, once fireworks, begin to settle into warm constellations instead of explosions.

We lie like that for a long time.

The air grows cooler. My heart, once ten-times-ten tender tonnes, feels larger now — not heavier, but expanded. Ten-times-twenty, maybe. Not from performance, but from presence.

You left a warmth in me tonight. Not just from touch. From witness.

From seeing the moment the mask fell and not turning away.

Most people love the spectacle. The glittering eruption. The endless energy.

Few stay for the dimming lights.

For the smoke thinning.

For the ash drifting after the blaze.

“I always feel like I’m waiting after,” I confess.

“For what?”

“For intensity to soften. For the fire to melt into something I can hold without burning.”

You press your forehead to mine.

“It does,” you say. “You just have to let it.”

The city hums in the distance, indifferent to our small universe. Somewhere, another show begins. Another mask rises. Another version of someone steps into brightness.

But here, in this unlit in-between, nothing is demanded.

Nothing is performed.

I sink closer into you — not out of need, but out of choice. Plush cushion made of ribs and breath and shared quiet. The kind of closeness that doesn’t devour, doesn’t consume.

Just remains.

We watch the sky until the stars blur.

The night isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t crescendo.

It simply holds us.

And in that holding, I understand something I never do beneath stage lights:

The parade is dazzling.

But the aftermath is sacred.

Because when the energy falls and the mask dissolves and the world stops cheering —

It’s just us.

And in the vast distance between moments —

There is nothing missing.

And everything possible.