Tiny Dancer

Again and again I found myself touched by the singular desolation of that photograph. There was little in it that made so specific a claim but as a whole it was utterly impossible to ignore the despondency of the delicate figure wrapped around herself when all the air about her waited in vain for her movement. There was energy in the pose she held, her muscles rigid with purpose, but there was a remarkable feeling of weakness hiding in the shadows. Her body seemed to shiver underneath her thin shirt and leggings. I always felt the need to reach out to her but the despair seemed irrevocable and a glass of purely dimensional disabilities kept me from ever reaching her morose form.

She stood upon a stage as if held up by a giant hand, forcing her in front of the eye of scrutiny. She was balanced on the toes of one foot, pushing with all her force against this evil platform. The rest of her body was pulled up in a peculiar fashion similar to a child wrapped tightly in the fetal position. Her arms angled as a splash of ivory down across her raised leg and her hands landed pointing up against the knee in a tight, flat palmed grip so that her form created a series of triangles broken only by the slight curvature of her shoulder blades and head. Her hair draped down over her wayward shoulder and fell with a soft glint that betrayed its fine texture. Her chin tucked between her shoulders into the point where her finger tips and knee cap met, leaving no gap under her neck for light to pass through.

Her feet and ankles were bare, as were her arms and shoulders, and she gave the impression that her clothes may as well have been torn and spoiled for all her marks of abandonment, though they were not. Her black leggings clung to the muscular curvature of her legs like a second skin, terrified that at any moment they could be separated from their wearer. Her shirt stuck nearly as close, pressing like saran wrap over her ribs and spine. It folded in grey creases on her sides like half a sun floating on the horizon of her upper arm and raised thigh. The shirt was dull as the underside of a rain cloud but I knew it to be of a brilliant crimson. So striking it had been on her, a splash of blood from the center of a grey landscape. Even in the monotone landscape it managed to stand out but not so much in the manner of vitality as it had then, rather it was a soft center under which everything else was buried.

Her face wore an expression of detachment. Her furrowed brow and cringing neck spoke of some inner pain as hidden from the observer as her cries were silent. But her eyes were cast down in almost an angelic manner. They were calm and accepting but altogether in a land far too distant for another soul to connect to them. This contrast of both strong and quivering spirit was perhaps what always drew me back to the image. That unique quality that made the audience view her both as a passionate and headstrong individual and as a delicate and withering grace. This fact and perhaps the alternate view which could make this image appear to be taken from an aerial position above a body in its last breath of agony, made me cling nostalgically to this little slip of paper as if I understood. As if I could have done something.

I gave it one last hard stare before finally setting it upon the stone base. Above was her inscription, below was the grass whose roots kept down my memories. I lay a rose delicately on top of it, being careful that the thorns did not hinder the image under its glass covering. I knew every line of the image by heart and knew I’d be lucky to ever lose it from my dreams. I silently bade farewell one last time. As I turned away the impression of the crimson petals upon the mottled grey stone remained on the insides of my eyelids in an eternal haunting. I wanted to stop, to turn around and admit that I was only running from the guilt, but I had to move on. With either indifference or oblivion I had to keep walking. I wiped the back of my hand across my face in one final gesture of absolution and took off down the road.