by: Gracie Moore
The ribbons snake around her ankles and up her legs. Her chest rises and falls. The dancer rises to her tiptoes, reaching for the moon. The ballet begins. Delicately, dolefully, her dance weaves her soul through the air.
The man in the corner puffs and sighs, "Faster."
The dancer trips into a spin and her soul tangles and snarls. Fear creeps cold along her spine. Her arches and twirls become cluttered, her hands, knife-like.
The man stands and shouts, "Faster!"
The dancer's veins carry her pounding heart through every limb. Her steps are agitated, her hands clench the moon as her body twitches jaggedly through the empty air.
The man pounds the air and stamps the floor, frantically shrieking "Faster! Faster!"
There is desperation fisted in by a dance that is no longer human. The dancer's soul is knotting oxygen into webs. There is anguish here. Her heart slices through her fingertips, gashing the air.
A whisper, from very far away, perhaps from the moon, "faster…"
Her bones fracture. The air falls in pieces, littering the floor. She flutters down with them, a fallen bird.
For half a second, she had been so beautiful.
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