Folded over,

A ballet dancer in tight origami,

A bent dream,

A folded spectrum

A tiny moment of beauty nestled in the grace of a crinoline and lace.

 

This is Dorothy praying over the yellow brick road,

Clara nursing the Nutcracker,

Odette purging her broken heart.

 

This is a lovely young woman who peeled back the protective layers

And let me walk into her life,

Rest my hands against the walls of her heart

And feel the rippling silken thorns of her history brush my palms

And then recede without leaving a mark.

 

This is a lovely young woman in a permanent bow,

Her hair escaping from the elastic band,

Her hands an arrowhead in negative space.

 

Sunlight breaks over her, falls through the moat-mesh surrounding her,

Balancing her, a circumference of music notes and golden edges in the calligraphic

Arabesques of her toes

Of the points in her fingers

In the long lines in her legs.

 

She is curled in a perfect ninety degree angle for a moment

Collapsing the forest behind her

Staring at the ninety degrees of the bricks under the tips of her toes

Before she falls…

 

Catches herself,

Pebbles burying themselves into the palms of her hands,

–Tiny freckled stigmata–

She sighes,

Brushes away the nuisance pain

Straightens,

And then resumes her cosmic orbit,

A falling star dancing on the Earth….

 

A comet searching for her contrail that will send her back into space