The violins were missing somewhere within the mirror. The strings curl around the elastic of my partner’s shoes as he lifts me up. It braids through the soft pink ribbons and snaps as it approaches my ankle. Still I count one, two, three, four, one two, three, four, my arabesque a half-second behind. The whispers of Aaron’s hands on the keys hum as I walk by the piano, our eyes set on the glass.
Aaron asks me about our plans for the weeknd as we ride the ferry, the letters in his words jumble and widen in a clueless crossword.I tell him I need the wires. He sits in an office,reading months-old articles, asking “who wore it best?” while I wear oversized black headphones in a booth, waiting to say beep.
Leg on the barre, the wires charge as I stretch. A shoe squeaks on the wooden floor as the instructor chats with Aaron. Simone, her hand a door over mouth, turns her head to Devin. Through the cracks of her fingers, she mumbles she couldn’t get some random guy out of her bed and almost didn’t make it on the train. The instructor claps her hands, a shrill echo splintering the conversations with an abrupt cut and I stand on the left side of the barre.
The violin strings clamp to the wires and tighten. The dots and ties hover over the downward stems while I pirouette. A silhouette of myself dangles on the edge of the staff and I leap into it, unprepared for my height and I am visible in the mirror again.
Aaron says we have to go to Victoria Peak as he separates the takeout containers. The wires won’t be able to hold until the company tours in spring, I say to him. They’ll start to thin as I board the plane and slowly tear through conversations, traffic and split the definition of who I am to the director, choreographer, and soloists, everyone. He presses his lips on my temple and says I am the sky, observant of the fragile clouds and unhindered by what may pass.
~
Pam Avoledo’s fiction has been published in Scrawl Place, Roi Faineant Press, Ellipsis Zine and others.