I am the Dancer

The stage lights fill the night

I dance and spin for my life.

Hoping this time, I might overcome it all

But I am so afraid that I will fall.

The audience becomes a silver glass

No longer a friendly sea of faceless mass.

I stare and see myself, too big and fat

--“You’ll never be a dancer, not with that body”--

My old instructor knocks me on my back.

I try to hug my poor unhappy body

But my brain shifts and thinks, who would watch me? Nobody.

I spin fast and faster to burn away the undesired

All I seem to do is light a fire on my stage pyre.

Practice makes Perfect?

I know not what’s perfect.

All my life I have been told;

Not the right shape

Not competitive enough

Not graceful

Not a dancer

I can’t know what perfect is, not when I am flawed

And the audience is ripping at them with their claws.

So even as the fire creeps up my spinning skirts

I flirt.

I flirt with this idea, that if I keep going I will be the dancer

That I am the dancer.

But my hard sought dreaming passion

Rages to a nightmare in a fashion.

And before my waking eyes

The fire and the mirrors all turn to nighttime lies.