On Monday nights in Milan I have been cycling over cobbled streets to a salsa class where I dance with strangers whose last names I don't know, cry in the arms of a grey haired Puglian who looks like an Italian Laurel from Laurel and Hardy, and slowly remember what it means to be alive. This is an essay about dancing as survival, about Alice Walker, about the grief of cities we have loved and lost, about sweaty palms and letting go, and about why the permission we keep waiting for was never anyone else's to give.

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