When I was twelve years old, I didn’t know that on my last day
as a professional ballerina, I would be wearing a stupid, oversized
black satin ribbon on top of my head. A heavy,
circus dress pulling at my waist, my hips. The night before,
I had a tutu. I was the second girl dripping down a hazy ramp,
snaking slowly through dry ice. Thirty-nine times—
arabesque, plie, fingers long, reach, reach, reach—
shoulders down, breathe, gulp back the flood puddling
at my neck. I pressed my weight into the stage to steady
my cells. The cells that knew the contours of the other dancers’
relevés. On stage, we bourréed, inhaled—slowly, sensually,
painfully—moved in unison until our cue to exit.
They lingered in the wings as I emptied my theatre case,
legwarmers, my last tendus. I imagined the next girl receiving it
before her first tour, stuffing it full of her own
hope. Before I darkened my spot at the mirror, I let
a few dancers who knew the curve of my calves, every pound—
over, under—pick through the rest of my things. I kept
my pointe shoes, though. The last pair I had worn,
a few new ones, shiny, hard as stone. For sixteen years,
they slept under my bed and read my journals
by flashlight in a box they shared.
Every time I opened the lid to toss another one in, their satin
would glimmer. When I turned forty, I put them on,
and like a leash, they began to lead me. Firmly,
but gently to the nearest barre. Slowly,
my hips opened, my toes got tougher, and the ladies who danced
only for joy nuzzled me, like puppies, as my
technique spun itself back
into my bones. When the last remnants of brainwashing circled,
a taunt that said older dancers lacked beauty, I bristled—
my gut holds four decades of blood,
curdled, purified, ready to surge forward toward every heart that
yearns
to see vulnerability entangled with substance, a woman
who owns her despair, won’t bend her will, and has the skill
and precision—and discretion—to break you open, too.
