The Dance.

There she is! A delicately swaying apparition flitting gracefully against the velvety darkness of the theatre! Balanced on her toes, arms stretched out searching, face upturned in ardent agony.What is it that she seeks?

Sometimes life changes in the flicker of a breath, in a rush of fractured seconds of infinity, in something as inane as somebody brushing past you for a split second climbing the staircase of life. Somebody goes up and somebody comes down. He was climbing up, she breathlessly tumbling down. He barely registered her presence; she gave herself up to him.

Flailing as she is, trying to hold onto ephemeral bonds, quicksilver slivers of desires thrown her way every now and then, why then is she still snuggling the pain? Every shred of dignity given away? Or is this what she does to herself?

She’s the ballerina dancing to music unheard by others, in an empty theatre, as she pirouettes the dance of life perched delicately on her ballerina shoes. The spotlight of life mercilessly prodding her on, or was it her own desire?

I wondered as I looked at her, secretly, peeking out from behind the velvety curtains, as she danced the fractured dance of life and love wooing her invisible lover, about what she sought to gain. Such beauty born out of a fountain of pain, a molten lava of undulating endless search, a mirage in a desert.

I wanted to run to her and plead with her to stop her dance, to hold on to her dignity no matter what, but then, it occurred to me, that to dance was her life, to love her choice, it didn’t matter that the theatre was empty. It didn’t matter that the prince was invisible. It didn’t matter that the music was unheard. Her joy lay in the dancing, in leaping up as high as she possibly could, uncaring of arms that wouldn’t be there to hold her when she fell. And fall she would. Hadn’t she already?

But dance she would…
And that’s all that mattered.
Really.