Ballerina

The ballerina’s pointe shoes are now torn and weary. Her toes are broken from tip-toeing a waltz on top of this silk thread of expectations. Her arms are tired of holding the same shapes of black and white around her masks. Her tutu waves goodbye to the freedom of childhood and melancholically shakes itself away into the shape of perfection. Lean, tall, a skeleton of broken whispers, her small breasts barely dare to cushion her woes. Her toes keep pointing down, down, where her gaze is meant to be while she dances a sad dance, a funeral march of what could never be. The dew drops on her forehead cascade through her soul like tears of salty anguish, little liquid mirrors that reflect the contraction of long-worn muscles.

The holes in her shoes are getting bigger and bigger and, suddenly, she starts to see where her toes are pointing to. She can see the dust and shadows of her tortures and she longs for a new tune that will carry her heart away from its steady rhythm.  And so she breaks the choreography in an attempt to look up. Her eyes become fixed in the feathered hopes that fly above and she stops the dance. A silence of suspense keeps time imprisoned in its grip. The mighty hand lets go and so does she. She takes off her heavy pointe shoes and jumps.

Se knows that she might fall but she jumps anyway. She jumps into her true self without fear or shame. She lands on quicksand, improvising her own dance, moving to her own humming, which grows and swells, gradually steadying the floor beneath her, allowing her to hear herself sing.

Her music rises and rises, until she isn’t afraid to sing, until she isn’t scared to dance, until she isn’t afraid to live.