Drunk In a Barre

Once manifested on the heel of Adagio in G major, balancés and assemblés from the back hand. Baryshnikov told me to flatten my stomach, so I repressed the urge to breathe; suffocation is incandescence by the barre. Then I looked in the mirror and the mirror glared back in contempt- the meat, the pillow I nursed in my belly, the spine, always sagging like the pools of honey in my knees. I shoveled over some Hydroxycut and pride, and bribed it to be my lover. Quitting was hard, unless I never did it. Unless I cigarette-butted my way out of Saturday rehearsals. Timed death. As if I could peel a stopwatch from nodules of encephalon, shake it in front of Svetlana- ‘I have a rendez-vous with the Pope, my future is to become a world-class wine connoisseur, wine demands an open mouth, not skinny torsos and high relevé’ Little girls always dream in the soles of pink pointe shoes, but magic approximates deception and the infamous split blooded toe. My mother has the home tapes. Me shanae-ing on kitchen floor so close to the bowl of kiwis I could sense the lanate growth. Then I got dizzy. Then I fell and sprained the right ankle. It’s been twenty-two Broadway shows, twenty-three if you count the one where Price made us tap dance on Eighth Avenue to prove to Lenny that we were diverse and versatile (I don’t know how to tap). Now, my feet are lumps of unheated coal and a post-it note folds on the desk of your office, green like the tea I brew on Saturday afternoons. That, I guess, must be resignation.