Cherry eyes, littered with salty tears, pinch the light away.
The room is cold and lit by a grey shadow cast by the lowering sun on the river outside. Plastered to the floor and starving, I had no strength to scavenge for food. I just came back from dance, and the piano melodies from hours of dancing kept me company in the lonely grey room, giving me an illusion of fullness.
The longer I soaked in the music within my mind, the more I felt the need to satisfy the strongest craving in my life -- the desire to dance. With an empty stomach, but a mind full of music, I wrapped the silk ribbon of my pointe shoes securely around my ankles.
I danced in the silence that night, tears dripping down my cheek, in a room that didn’t know me -- in a home that didn’t want me. I danced through the empty air, my arms extending like the swans of the river until my ankle snapped with stress exerted on the satin pointe shoes. My body crashed into the floor. The empty room saw me laying silent -- the cold floor unable to soak all the tears from my broken heart. I un-knotted the ribbon and pulled my swollen foot from the chamber. My toes dripped sacrificial blood unto the floor. My blisters broke and the flesh pulsated.
In the moment that I danced, I did not feel anything but peace. When I danced, I was transported to a different world. The air around me became full and warm and soft, whereas my world after the music stopped was grey and cold and vapid.
I remember the hurt inside me vanishing and filling a hole in my heart with each graceful step of the dance. Focusing on what I could be allowed the pain of who I was to be relieved. The pain from inside my heart made bloody toes seem weak.
I remember being heartbroken and hungry, lost and lonely, but I remember dancing in the silence to transform into the person that I wanted to be. There were tears in my dance that communicated the feelings of my heart and soul. I spoke to the silence. Through dance, I expressed everything to the silent walls that were held by the secrets of my tears.
Tune in next week for the next section of my book