The Dance

      The little girl is sitting in the corner of the small, dimly-lit studio, the pounding rain outside seeming to engulf her small figure. Anna does not want to go home to her house, where nothing but harsh words and misery awaits her. She has exactly twenty three minutes left to sit alone, behind the dusty old piano, and wait for her.
        Just when the ticking of the clock becomes almost unbearable, there is the sound of a creaky door being opened, and a tall figure steps into the room. She is carrying nothing but a pair of pointe shoes, the satin ribbons dangling towards the floor. The girl sits down on the dusty floor and begins carefully putting them on, and Anna creeps forward behind the piano to watch.
      She watches the slope of her white shoulders, the long legs stretching against the scuffed wooden floor, the shine of the light upon her dark brown hair. The dark, calm eyes that seem to reflect the sadness of her world. Her long, pale fingers tie the shining ribbons with ease and, finally, she stands up and walks towards the record player.
      At first the patter of rain is all that can be heard, but then music fills the room – classical, quaint, hauntingly lovely. She walks to the middle of the room, and Anna holds her breath. This is what she waits for every week. She waits so she can watch the calmness descend over this finely-sculpted face, the painfully delicate shoulders straighten, the soft breathing slow.
      And the girl begins to dance. Around and around the room, the limbs moving in what can only be an expression of pure joy. The pointe shoes clap against the floor before springing up into perfect arches, the exquisite white arms seem to transform the space into pure energy. She jumps, leaps, twirls, and is, for those brief minutes, completely at one with the music. The little girl holds her breath behind the piano and watches the pirouettes – one, two, three, five, seven. She watches the calm determination, the set of the mouth, the fierce shine of joy in her eyes. The music comes to a crescendo and she is better than ever before, radiant in the dim glow of the room, spinning, twirling, leaping, dancing, the whole of her being immersed in the expression, the explosion, of her feelings within. The whole world is holding its breath and the little girl feels dizzy with the power and exaltation before her, the whirling body flying to the brink of exhaustion and destruction.
      Then the music slows. The sound of the rain gets louder. It drowns the dying notes. The arms move with a tender, sorrowful grace. The little girl feels tears run down her cheeks. The beauty, the motion slows and stops, the last few notes die into a penetrating silence. Exhausted, the dancer sits on the floor, spent, her poise replaced by a deep, terrible weariness. The little girl knows what is coming, and wants to turn away but cannot. Anna watches the exquisite dark eyes fill with pain and sorrow, with loneliness and hunger, the pain of transition into the present made horribly immediate. The pointe shoes come off, and the pale slender feet within are covered in blood.
  Useless, saturated bandages are taken off, soft gasps punctuating the air, the sight made all the more ghastly by the quiet paleness of the girl's face as she struggles to contain tears of pain. When the last bandage is ripped off, a tear glides to the floor, making a shiny mark in the dust. Her face slides into an emotionless mask in preparation for yet another entrance into reality, and she gets up and straightens her narrow shoulders. The magic of motion is gone as the ballerina picks up her pointes, slips on her tattered old shoes, and steps silently out the door into the cold evening rain, leaving the little girl alone in the small, deserted studio.