Dance of the Heart

To anyone whom has ever had a heart break.....and the one that broke mine. You know who you are.

 

Hers was a ballet whose accompaniment

                was ever a crescendo,

                                sweet rising music filling her mind

but never filtering to the ears of others.

The dance grew from that music,

                the symphony that unfurled giving bloom to a

                                choreography of blood and spirit.

And on a singular night,

                beneath constellations of her own design,

                                hanging about a breathless moon,

Her ballet will make its debut

                to an expectant audience, lovers all,

                                come to see the opus made of years and yearning.

The house darkens and

                soft, sweet music fills the air,

                                low at first, but strengthening with each stanza.

She emerges, a dancer small of stature,

                with scarlet tresses swept up in flowers, loose spirals hanging in soft tendrils

                                along her slender alabaster neck, tracing back to unruly locks upon her crown.

The audience drinks her in, petite face off-set with dark eyes,

                orbs wide with hope and wonderment, her lithe figure swathed in moon pale layers,

                                gossamer floating on the melody.

Arms, feather-light, stretch wide,

                fingers splayed against the light, dust motes drifting with the air,

                                stirred by the movement of graceful limbs as they reach for lofty heights.

Slender limbs sweep wide, avian in their soaring, dipping, darting,

                then drifting down to flutter across her bosom,

                                before flying wide again.

Feet, bare and swift, glide and thump with joy,

                flitting across the wooden expanse, as

                                a swelling heart fuels her feet.

Legs crossing each other, pumping

                her pas de bourr�-e cutting shadows from the light;

                                fevered motes are now in her wake, love in her every glissade.

That the dancer is immersed in love is not a question,

                the smile on her face clue enough, her careful

                                choreography, mapped so carefully once, now betrays her heart.

And her steps betray her soul, dragging it into the light,

                from that center spot from which it shrunk for innumerable ticks

                                of a doleful metronome.

As her body swirls in arcs and drifting circles,

                contagion spreading as smiles, even tears of joy,

                                moves through the throng of lucky observers.

 

Memories of a past love…

           A lost love…

                           A present love…

Shine through shadows, and flits across hopeful hearts in the darkened hall…

She pirouettes, leaps and twirls in joyous relief,

                the cabriole as vibratory as her thrumming heart,

                                the music belying an elated soul…

 

Suddenly it stops…

Music, pas chasse halted by an unseen conductor,

                as the dancer falters, then is frozen mid-step,

                                pale arms turned to stone, hands outstretched, grace become granite.

The dancer’s face falls,

                mouth open in disbelieving horror,

                                with eyes flying open in fearful pain.

Hands drop suddenly to the side, articulated lead,

                broken birds no longer in flight,

                                her head flagging, lolling in dreadful despair, shoulders rounded in slumping defeat.

Blackness engulfs the dull glow that was her once-bright footlight,

                as silence reigns the dark,

                                the music as stifled and choked as her dwindling pulse.

The sounds of heartbreak shatter the theatre,

                as strands of cruelty, graceless and cold, begin to invade her hall;

                                they are sharp, discordant, bitterly sad shards of pain.

A spotlight flares, trained mercilessly now, while

                a melody of broken dreams emerges,

                                sounds that squeeze the hearts of all within its wail.

Arms cross and tighten against her body in torment,

hands covering her face against lachrymal frailty,

                only to come away as though stung, her beautiful visage marred by anguish.

Cimmerian eyes flash wetly, limned by kohl, now made unkind;

                raven tears flow down her pale countenance as her dance unwinds,

legs cumbersome, steps stuttering en dolente, symphony turned to dirge

By a heart made heavy…

heavier than she can bear…

                heavy as the weight of lost years, lost hopes…

 

Somber shrouds slip and descend upon her petite form,

                the curtain come too soon,

                                no act beyond this sad finale…

Feet not so light,

                lonely arms urging her body to find refuge,

                                in an effort to salve the wounds, bind the tattered heart.

The music gone, the crowd departs,

their own steps in the thresholds shuffling in bereavement,

                ponderous silence, palpable, suffocating.

But the diminutive dancer raises her flaming head high,

                the only gesture left to her, and

                                once-lithe arms drop to her sides.

The terpsichorean, in effort great, rolls back her shoulders,

                fighting for ephemeral grace, her throat tensed against

                                the deep tones of resignation and muted sobs…

 

She steps back,

     Stretches her arms wide, to the point of pain…

        Pirouettes once more, this time in ponderous synchronicity with her now arrhythmic heartbeat…

          Bends deep and low, fingers clutched tightly at her skirts…

             And, with a dying swan’s grace,

                Flows from the stage…

 

 

Author's Note

Revisions by Wes Guptill