Work Text:
Beneath you, ballet dancers move like liquid across the stage, their limbs flowing and floating as their bodies spring over the platform. You watch them from above, your feet dangling down from the false heavens of the catwalk. You watch, and watch, and watch.
You do not think about it.
You cannot think about it.
An arm is raised high in the air. No one looks up; why would they? Why would anyone want to look at you? You're beautiful in the facade of this dress, less beautiful outside of the fabric. Everyone below watches the show with vapid intrigue. The dancers are here to dance. The rich are here to be entertained. That's just how society works, even beyond ballet.
Ballet is etched into your essence. In your dreams, at night, you are still dancing. In your dreams you still have that shoe, unstained, unsoaked, worn. In your dreams your mother and father hold you close, close, close as they breathe living breaths and beat living hearts. You pose for a group photo with the rest of your class, and your smile is the widest in the print.
In reality, you kick your feet back and forth. Slow circles, no noise, never caught. You lean into the metal of the railing in front of you, feeling its cool silver against your skin. Everything about this is unbearable.
Later you are pinned to a wall. Not again. You try to accept it this time; things only get worse when you fight back. It's just a part of this life sometimes, you tell yourself, as a face nuzzles itself forcibly into your neck.
To distract yourself, you dance. You stand on the tips of your toes in the mind, dancing in front of a mirror, watching the flood of your body. It isn't at all like how those dancers had moved; there isn't enough freedom---
