Tiny Dancer

IN ANOTHER LIFE

I was a dancer then. They called me a phenomenon — so small, at four-foot-ten, so strong and energetic, and the planet on its axis couldn’t spin as fast as I could on my dancing shoes of inky black with sequins thick upon them.

Just now I am performing acrobatic tricks with ease, agility, and poise. The children watch with eyes as large and round as dinner plates. I jump to so astonishing a height, they squeal in joy and wonder at the great surprise of it. 

The mamas and the daddies hold their breath. I step, accelerate, then hurl my body, curled up tightly like a roly-poly bug, into the air, and turn a pair of somersaults before I land as lightly as a flake of snow upon a quilt of eiderdown.

Now I am graceful, leaping, pirouetting smoothly as a maple leaf upon a steady breeze. I love the way I can direct my energy from heart to limb, as every part of me performs according to my whim.

Now, near the end, I needn’t think at all. I move spontaneously, rising, falling, synchronizing with the music of Tchaikovsky, reveling in artistry of motion, brimming with the mutual appreciation, audience to me and back again.

I was a dancer with the carnival in nineteen-hundred thirty-one. We traveled to the tidy little towns and giant, dazzling capitals of Europe in our caravan. Do you remember me? Perhaps we knew each other then.

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