The first time she had ever dance: drew forward like a bird mid ascension raising her arms, the composed look of determination propelled her body into the swells of music, enraptured by the quick movements of flight, as though she would traverse to ciel. Then afterward when the theater grew heavy with silence, and the applause echoed in her dark head, she cried. I watched her tend to feet no longer delicate in their structure but crooked and disformed. Her hands, glowing like snow moths, floated across the ever growing thinness of her body.
For three years, I have watched her grow into a dwindling mass of her former shape. Where there once was deep unending undulations and bountiful of flesh, came gentle curves in spare quantities. But she had bled and pirouetted, bruised and abused to reach such a state. Even now, she tilts her face, an open heart, towards the sky: I missed the stars. She had, for every night, she had sweated for the approval of others, neglecting to speak and I had forgotten how husky and melodic it sounded in the dark, just as I had forgotten her starved features.
“I missed you,” I tell her softly, and embrace her round her waist. The sharpness of her hips offended me but I still held her as close I could gather. I had wondered if she would break beneath my arms and needy warmth of my breath. I remembered the first time I held her as we swayed to the symphony of passing cars and pattering rain, she shivered in my arms, and spoke with innocence. We made love many times in that way with her hair like silk against my breasts. But now, she merely clutches the ivory balcony rail and savored the October night.
She does not respond; I do not think she cares much. Her eyes, glittering as though wet from tears, have kept themselves riveted to the stars. Annabelle draws her arms across her chest as though to protect her soul from their twinkling. For moments, we stand in silence, before she casts those gorgeous orbitals in my direction. My soul nearly fills. I have missed their colors and the lush pout of her mouth. In the moonlight, she looks frail and afraid, wild and untamed. I can see now that she has cried, a single unsound tear that curled along her cheek, and buried itself against her collarbone. I remember when I had not been good at comfort, but she patiently allowed me to hold her; now, she would have no such intimacy. She wouldn't afford me the sentimental fumbling. She would just whisper it was wrong for two women to touch like this and push me away.
“I know,” finally, the admission. It is quiet and factual, holding no traces of apology. I hadn't expected it to. Annabelle had found her passion and love in dance; any love of hers possessed was merely a fleeting, brief iota. It
It falls like red dusk against her shoulders, caressing with tormenting gentleness by wind. My mouth grows dry with the soothing smell of her: talcum, light, air. I felt she was made of moonlight and water, not completely of the earth. Oh, and how ethereal she looks standing with bare shoulders dusted with gold freckles, even thin...even silent. The admission had felt enough, and seemed to allow a new space to draw us close. She gives a small laugh and rises to the tips of her feet with practiced ease, and begins to dance, just as she did on stage, growing with such life she seemed to nearly touch heaven. Step by step she moves like sweet salvation, limbs circling and rising, legs outstretching and undulating, hips swaying with subdued sensuality.
I see it before my heart understand. The relaxation of her mouth, the pardoning half gaze of her eyes. Annabelle intends the raising of her foot against her thigh, intends her arms to move like those of a bird. She does not whisper of love or regret. There is simply the single moment of impulse in which she dances and moves like a bird, and then, she reaches up. In one instant, her frail body slips from our fifteen story apartment without sound; but still, I reach for her. I want to grab her hand, and release the horrified, terrible cry beating like wings at my throat. She did not reach or call for me. She merely flew with pale arms and hair of fire, blue eyes like that of the sky.
The sweet imperfect love I had for her did not utter itself, and she had forgiven me for this. She had forgiven me when I clawed desperately for air, clutching the railing for its failed support, watching her as she grew tired of dancing in her gilded cage. She had grown tired of captivity, of its false liberties and expectations. She had forgiven me as I watched her burn like a phoenix without hope of resurrection, but in the aftermath of her destruction, I could not fulfill that of which she asked. That smile had spoken of her forgiveness of ginger lovemaking and gentleness. But those beseeching eyes had unfairly asked me for mine. I couldn't offer it when I watched her blood mix with her hair. I couldn't when I saw that Annabelle couldn't fly. I just waited until she would unfold those awkwardly turned limbs, and back into my arms. But she didn't. She laid there with strange blue and red lights flickering across her body.
Even then, she wouldn't let me offer my comfort. She would just tend to her bruises, and dream of the admirateurétoiles Death would award her. and the
