The dance of your life

How hard it must be for you

To see the empty spaces in your closet

Where years of ballet costumes hung

And beneath

Where piles of worn through ,

Pointe shoes gathered.

You remember where it all began,

Through my memories

And your earliest ones.

It started even before your first dance class

Even before you learned how to walk.

When you were a baby

The only thing that took your pain away

Was when I danced with you in the night

All hours of the night

When you couldn’t sleep.

You would rest your head on my shoulder

And there was peace there

In the unsung melody

And the rhythm of movement

With the two of us in a hallway

Or unlit room where night kept us company.

The next best thing

When you were only 2 years old

Was your music box ballerina.

We both laughed as I twirled you around on your wood bedroom floor

As we listened to the first few notes

Of swan lake

Winding it over and over again

Until eventually

It broke.

Then at 3

The first time you put on your

Brand new

Ballet slippers

You found the very thing that you

Would love,

For years to come.

It would follow you

From the room

Where you learned to dance

To the stage

To other schools in different cities

To your dreams at night

Where your feet would still move as if they were dancing.

It has been a relationship of love and pain

Passion and perfectionism

Beauty and destruction.

You tried to dance through your injuries

Maybe if you pretended you were okay

You would forget the pain.

But the most catastrophic injury you had

Would not let you forget it existed.

It crept into your spine

With an ugly rage

That ravaged you of your ability to dance.

And broke your spirit.

I put away years of tutus

And those worn out pointe shoes

That you loved so much

Because the tears in the once smooth satin

Showed how hard you worked.

I hope that when you do look back

One day

You will think of it as a part of your life that didn’t leave you behind

But a part of you

You have kept alive

Through other things sacred

Creative

Self-affirming

healing.

By J..Hamilton

A version of you

These waves

I hate that you inherited this.

Nature versus nurture.

The latter.

I look into those haunted eyes

Catching a glimpse of myself.

I see my younger self in you.

Flailing

Trying not to sink

Trying to breathe air

Not water.

One moment is heaven,

The next

Hell.

I wish I could destroy this thing that wants to consume you.

You deserve to live,

To breathe,

Dance,

Swim.

Not disappear when the water rises.

I try to lift you up each time.

What if I am not there at the right time

The next time these waves try to pull you in?

By J. Hamilton

Lasciare

To leave, or let go

We do this our entire lives.

From birth

When we leave our mother’s body,

And also

At the end of her life,

When we say goodbye.

Then the body of life

Between the beginning and ending

There are so many other sheddings, of our relationships

Our journeys,

Ourselves.

We emerge

And re-emerge

Over and over

Until our story has been told.

By J. Hamilton