Silent Melody

I wrote this in 2007 for AP Lit. The assignment was to write a short story small enough to fit on a postcard, and afterward we edited and added to it to make it a full page. An old gem.

The woman with the long auburn hair slipped into the dance studio door through which she had been watching for some time now.  She was cautious, not wanting her supplies to rupture the beautiful sounds she knew would be coming from the quartet in the corner.  She sat on the edge of the dance floor, setting her canvas gently in front of her, spreading the vivid paints upon her palette.  The curtains had been drawn.  The perfect light now gently played against the dancers' arms and legs as they spun in swirls of magenta, indigo, white.  Their bodies were the melody she knew so well, and their movement was as familiar as these paints before her, mixing into life.  The dance was new to her.  It was like the rising sun of each morning, and yet she knew it, in each bone, each muscle, where her body knew it too and wanted to grace the floor with her own rhythm.

She watched the musicians on the other side of the room.  She imagined the gentle acoustics, wrapping around each person like smoke.  Wrapping around and tucking into the folds of their clothing like a sleek secret, waiting to be told in their movement.  The refrain would then spin around them, tapping upon their shoulders like this sunlight that was so perfectly lighting her view.  On the music would go, never becoming old.  The only change that might ever come to it would be the style of a young artist, refreshing it, making it his own and yet savoring its impenetrable beauty.  She looked into the musicians' eyes, wondering if they knew just what they were doing to her.

No, they wouldn't be included in her painting.  They weren't hit by those rays of sunlight.  But their art was making the people move.  She glanced at the instructor, with a body so much like hers, toned but elegant.

She emitted an inaudible sigh and dreamt of that music that she could no longer hear.