Everything

I. Heart racing. Hands shaking. Everything I feel before I perform at a dance competition. The choreography racing through my head as I pace back and forth in the wings. Don’t make the same mistakes as last time. It won’t be good enough. The piece on stage comes to a final pose. Everything is still except for the rise and fall of the dancer’s exhausted chests. Then. My number is called. I take my place on a stage that feels like a desert. The Marley is a harsh and unforgiving heat underneath my feet. It’s on me to leave it all out on the stage. The music begins, rising and falling with my sweeping movements. I turn and jump, holding on to every fiber of muscle I have. Pushing myself more than I want to go. Faltering. I hear the judge’s whisper. Their critical eyes slithering up my spine and talons sinking into my brain. Everything on this stage is for them.

II. Costume illuminated in the light, gleaming brighter than the first glimpse of the sunrise. Baboom boom-Kah! The beat of the music explodes from the speakers and ignites my body. I soar. I spin. I dance. The adrenaline pumping through my body makes me feel electric. The audience is cast into darkness; they almost don’t exist. Unexplored wonders of the world coming to life on stage. A version of myself only visible in those moments. Untouchable, unreachable moments. When I perform for myself, everything is real. Everything is for the ecstatic pulse in my heart.

III. A picture. Pointe shoes. Memories of pointed toes and extended arms swept away. Pain, pressure, passion left behind in a box under the bed. A constant ache in my back and my heels reminds me of the limits I pushed for higher legs and higher jumps. The fear of what felt so natural to me becoming a foreign language drowns my thoughts. I sit on my bed, hands bruising over the smooth satin of my first pair of pointe shoes. I remember how the excitement sparked through my body at my first pointe shoe fitting, as the fitter lay the bundles of delicate slippers before me. I remember the stories I told with them. Irreplaceable moments.