Really?*
The question
The catylist to a hurricane in her once calm seas
The hurricane grew
It hit her flawless shores
Caused her pure cities to flood
With doubt
Insecurity
Unsure of every compliment
She lost her faith in the goodness
She is past tense now
"Children this is what happens when..."

I have written you so many letters,
That I will never send.

They tell you about the days we shared,
And the heart I had to lend.

Intricately weaving webs of passion,
Something I had to defend.

Because there were those awful moments,
Where I felt it was all pretend.

I wrote to you in earnest,
About the feelings I had.

If you read these letters,
I'd imagine you'd be mad.

You told me not to feel that way,
You told me not to fall.

I told you that it could happen,
You didn't believe me at all.

We were supposed to be platonic,
But something in me swayed.

Looking back, you were gaming,
It was how you smiled when you played.

You could never lie to me,
I could always see right through you.

In that moment you so gently kissed me,
I saw you falling too.

Now that it is over,
I write to you again.

About the love I had for you,
My handsome silly friend.

And how it fell apart,
How it began to bend.

Another letter I have wrote for you,
That I will never send.

I slip my tender toes into your familiar bind,
your pink laces twist up my legs
and animate me.

En pointe, my toes are perched upon their boxes,
and your silken arms embrace my ankles
as if I walk on nothing.

Fuetes swing you around and I am a circus ride,
turned into painted porcelain,
a spinning doll.

I spend months with you, scuffing your soles, tearing your cloth,
burning your laces, stretching your lips.
We become old.

One day they will put us both in a tiny fabric box,
only to spin when it opens, only to dance
at the soft tinkling of a bell.

The picture hangs upon the wall
of a slender woman, une eleve
She is eternally en pointe
a Student of   great Nurerev.


With Martha Graham’s Corps de ballet
She’d danced (before the children came)  
Performed a beautiful Glissade-
enjoyed, for a while, a muted fame.

Light and shade proportionate
here catch her look of radiant joy
The dancer, ignorant of her fate,
seems more  a heavenly envoy.


But you and I both know the rest-
The ravages of age and time
The sad result of little strokes
that slow the step and cloud the mind.


Here is her cane, her walker too
Their owner has succumbed to age
There will not be a pas DE deux
Nor bouquets tossed upon the stage

I fell in love with the way
You told me you'd always be there
And how you complimented
My every flaw
And said I was perfect to you

I fell in love with the way
We are so alike
And how our personalities
Tangle like ivy around an old cottage

I fell in love with the way
You made me feel like nothing else matters
Despite the darkening depression
Deep inside my soul
And the anxiety that riddles me
You made me feel like I was normal
And told me I was still beautiful to you

And ill always love the little things
About you that make me fall hopelessly
In love with you
And I hope, my love, you do not realise
That actually I'm not normal
And actually I'm not perfect
But maybe
Just maybe I'm normal and perfect
To you.