encrefloue

Ballet Lessons

At 4,

she took me on a safari:

her arms, her eyes, her voice

lifting our heels

“Up!

Up!

Tippy toes!”

to reach for birds of paradise

flapping freely

through the bleeding oil paint sky

that was surely

just beyond the ceiling,

just beyond the air pocket

between my grasping fingers.

At 5,

she was a funny witch

(not a mean one—

cross my heart X);

she turned me into a frog!

“Ribbit!

Ribbit!”

we cackled,

our froggy legs bending,

hips dropping

“Lower!

Lower!”

until our heels lifted,

only our slimy

webbed toes

balancing

on surfboard lily pads

until we lost our sea legs

and plunged into the oily depths

beyond Monet's vantage point.

At 10,

she was a drill sergeant,

cruel, thin lips

pulled as tight as her bun,

jaw unclenching

only to yell at us—

at me—

“Chin down!

Shoulders back!

Suck in that gut!”

But I didn't mind;

I had seen

the glory of her warpath:

heels lifting,

toes carving the battle lines,

one long cannon of muscle

piercing the sky.

She was

all the strength

of the world.

I vowed

to always

march

behind her

since no one

could walk

beside her.

At 11,

she was a bitch.

I told her I wanted to quit

and she just said

“No.”

At 12,

she was Gepetto.

All the real dancers

had been turning for years—

their robotic bodies

executing inhuman feats,

well-oiled

overly shiny

automatons

whirring and whirling

in a perpetual motion music box.

My peers and their pirouettes.

Freaking perfect freaks.

One class,

I held it in

until they left

and sobbed to her

“Why can't I turn?”

She wiped my cheek

and led me to the barre.

“Let's see what we see.

First position.

Plié.

Relevé.

Passé.

See here?”

The lightest touch

on my side.

“You're caving just below the ribs.

Readjust.

Find your center.

Stop thinking

about the momentum.

Stop thinking

about failure.

Stop thinking.

Feel up.

Feel down.

Feel the crown of your head

pulling you into the sky.

Feel your weight funnel

into your toes

and push down

into the floor.

No, really push.

Push the earth down

and away.

Pull up

and push down.

Balance

through opposition.

Stillness

through conflict.

Pull up

and push down

and become the line

from Earth to Heaven.

Now.

Fourth position.

Plié.

Go.”

I turned

and the cosmos

did too.

At 15,

she was my sister.

When Degas

looked at me

a little too long,

a little too closely,

she pulled me in,

her lips rustling

the hair by my ear

as she murmured

cuttingly

“Let me know

if he needs

a front row seat

to The Nutcracker.”

At 17,

days before my audition,

days after my accident,

she was my visitor.

She stood tautly beside my bed

and I could barely look at her.

“It's bad,"

I managed.

Someone smeared

my legs

in garish hues

of oil paints:

Burnt Sienna,

New Gamboge,

Cadmium Red.

“I won't dance again.”

I could almost hear her

shake her head.

“Nonsense.”

“It's not humanly possible.”

“We're dancers.

We don't have to be humans.

We can be swans.

Or fairies.

Or Valkyries.”

At 46,

I was her visitor.

I sat beside her.

She was so small—

skin sinking into air pockets

between bones.

Bones sinking into

sterile sheets.

Heels sunken.

She stirred.

“Oh, it's you…

my little frog.”

I rolled my wheelchair

to the foot of the hospital bed

and held her feet.

“Do you feel that?”

Her ribs barely rose with breath.

She didn't respond.

“Chin down.

Shoulders back.

Breathe.

Readjust.

Find your center.

Feel the crown of your head

pulling you into the sky.

Feel the weight

funnel into your toes.

Feel up.

Feel down.

Up.

Up.

Tippy toes.

Push the earth

down

and

away.”

We unfurled fingers from our ruddy lips

and in exhaling were awestruck

that Air itself

would stoop to accept our hot tufts of spitty molecules

as its newborns, its grandmothers.

The Sun was too hungover to witness our masterful infancy,

and in that moment, we were the only audience to our being—

we gave each other knowing looks and played it off casually

by hurtling through the bedsheets of grass in fits of vocal everythings,

collecting each possible friendly drop of dew upon our gasping, sentient skin.

It’s right now and it’s ending.

It’s right now and it’s long gone.

Where are were they?

The honeybee:

tucked innocuously

behind an earlobe,

thrumming joyously

against my tongue.

The heart:

worn audaciously

below the sleeve,

sewn between

the thumb and forefinger,

jolting smoothly

beneath my chin.

Socrates:

etched overtly

across the canyon

of the back,

the words absorbing

in reverse

through my fingertips

which traverse

mindlessly

sense-fully

through the ravine of the scapulae,

down the dale of the spine

to the foothills and crests beyond.

The fruit:

plucked ripely

along the hipbone.

Pride:

shown bravely

upon the breast.

O Ganymede,

let these be

the points in your constellation.

Let them blaze as brightly

upon my stricken eyes

as you once did,

that I may

forever return

to your celestial body.

O Hyacinth,

scarce have I invoked

your name,

your image,

your memory,

for fear

that the jealous zephyr of time

would blow

your fading petals

from my clutching fists.

O my Achilles,

would you scorn

your loyal Patroclus?

O my Sleeping Faun,

my Dying Slave,

did do you

fear me

to be

the eagle

come

in a storm

of brutish thunder

and cloying feathers

to bear you

too soon

to the heavens,

too far aloft

from mortal pleasures?

Who was am I, then?

If nothing else,

if no one else,

I can be

Pygmalion,

crumbling

my mind

my heart

to dust,

soaking

my tears

my seed

therein,

and with the resulting clay,

and with the resounding void,

I will bend the malleable folds of time,

I will mold the fallible curves of memory,

I will forge the terrible arms of need

to chisel myself away

into a moment
of us,
unending.

O Adonis,

erode.

O Narcissus,

look up from the waters

and see me.