beauty to cry for

Ever since I was a little little girl I've been fascinated with ballerinas. The grace and suspension- turns that end only when they decide to and jumps they only come down from because they get bored; the delicate wrists and ankles that seem to weep as they arch into beautiful lines.
I made up my mind to become one, but after hours and hours of rehearsal today, I am so battered with bruises and blisters from the hard floor and angry pointe shoes that I can barely make it up the stairs. My feet are bleeding in a million places but it will all be worth it I tell myself.

Julie Kent; simply seeing her wonderful feet prompts deep sighs of longing. I wore my blue dress and the lovely heels that pinch but look so graceful with Grandmother into the city yesterday to see her. She was so sad and beautiful that I wept in my seat for the sight of her.

the ballerina and the baseball player

She packed up her things for the weekend. A weekend away from here is what I need, she thought. Can't let too much of life go by standing still.

The travel was long and tiring, but she finally found a welcoming place with a hard, warm floor she could rest on for the night or two. Friends awaited there. Friends who had been met before, and friends who hadn't. They took her out of the rain and the driving wind and fed her and warmed her and treated her as one of their own.

Across the rough, round table there was a man with eyes the color of chocolate which seemed to melt at the edges. They smiled at the ballerina and frequently flicked back to her face to check the tip of her nose or the curve of her collarbones. Her eyes, hazel and dancing, took in his hands, long as a pianist's (though he didn't play) and the way his cheek seemed to tug at his mouth when he laughed.

This night she slept not on the hard, friendly floor, but in a soft high bed where her long legs couldn't reach the ground. He smelled of earth and the clean sharpness of snow melt in rivers. He reminded her of summer and everything she wanted in life outside of the studio and the stage. Strong hands traced those collarbones and fit the slim waist. They laughed when they found he could enclose her tiny fist in one of those hands- it was perfectly baseball sized.

Together they hid from sleep and fought the night, but morning came anyway. It was time for the ballerina to move on, but he kissed her forehead and stole back a few more minutes. She walked back into the driving rain with a smile and the cold didn't bother her. She took the bed with her and stayed wrapped up in the soft, the smell of earth still in her hair.

easy as spotting

(photos)

I am sick again unfortunately, but the sickness is preferable to a double period of physics which I would have had today, so I don't hate it with all my heart (just the part that wants to dance)

you know who the dancers are because they may be too sick to go to school, but never too sick to go to class. Now the attempt will be to convince Maman that I do have my priorities straight after all...


Sitting in my bed, my sky is silver like an old man's hair- somber, not sad. The bare trees wait and if I look at the ivy, not the melting snow, I can almost convince myself that it's the end of March and I've made it through the coldest, darkest months.

It's a trick I have to play with my mind- a simple parlour illusion, like spotting a turn in ballet. I hang on to the dregs of autumn for as long as I can look back as the world spins, and then when I can reach no further- release- and snap my head around like an elastic, and there we are in spring.
With this I can trick time.

...it might just work...