Isabella

As she sat there shouldering the ashes of her pain that had burnt through her over the past few days (years, if she was being honest with herself), something urged her to open the anthology of poems she’d been gifted by her sister. She’d been lugging the book around in her bag for a while and just didn’t seem to have time for it, although she kept promising herself she’d get to it (soon). Pulling it out she of her bag she let the pages unfurl at random, stumbling upon these words by Ted Hughes. Slowly, as if learning to read, she mouthed out:

“Nobody wanted your dance,
Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering
Drowning life and your effort to save yourself,
Treading water,
dancing the dark turmoil,
Looking for something to give.”

Holding back tears, she wondered what about her glitter was so strange and the nature of her giving. It brought a wave of stupid, now insignificant, memories that held her captive to the shore. Out of nowhere, she heard a whisper:

“Baby. I had to make you strong. I needed you to learn to give to yourself, what you so freely give to everyone else. I need you to learn to dance on your own.”

On a random bench in a random city in the middle of an ordinary day, blew a gentle breeze, scattering the ashes of her pain into yesterday. Something in her changed. Isabella eased the strain in her shoulders, squeezing each one firmly with its opposite hand, unknowingly gifting herself a hug. She packed her things and started making her way back, asking “did I just have a conversation with God?” out loud. It was then that she came to know (maybe) for the first time that she’d never really been alone. She rose, her head held higher than it had been leaving rehearsals for her ten-minute break. More and more after that, she’d be called upon to dance the lead solo.

What she didn’t know at the time, was on that ordinary day, she returned to the studio as the Prima Ballerina.