Sausageplum Fairy

I remember thinking how dance would make me feel beautiful. By beautiful, of course, I mean thin. Parents who had hoped to enlighten and broaden horizons by taking me to musical theatre and ballets had instead accidentally mislead and slimmed my image of beauty. Oh damned ever are the good a parent tries to do. Young minds and old alike are kind to misinterpret. While mommy and daddy thought I would find the music entrancing, I of course could see nothing but toothpick legs in all of their elongated glory. How the Sugar Plum Fairy did glide across the stage on those appendices, and with such ease! They may not have been human legs at all; it must have been magic! Smeared with delicate pink tights, I could not then define the grace it must have taken to demand such leaps and bounds from such legs. The prima ballerina, is prima beautiful, because she is prima thin. I thought, looking down at my pudgy little girl thighs, that I could never muster such grace as she.

Ah, but no, I had the encouragement of two such parents who dared me to attempt anything I found interest in at all. Write a poem! Taste the beets! Put your finger in the center of the cake; even if you don't pull out a plum, you'll have cake on your finger, and that, too, was an experience my parents allowed me to have. So, I wanted to take dance lessons, and not just any dance, but ballet! I would be the Sugar Plum Fairy, and I would have branches for legs that would sweep me across the stage and toss me into the air—and I would be beautiful, and thin. I would dance in tights, and, my God, was that leotard a lycra spandex poly blend? Oh yes, in all of it's metallic purple glory, and a mock corset across the front, laced with county fair cotton candy pink ribbon. I thought it made me look beautiful. My brother thought it made me look fat, but what did he know? Ballerinas are thin and beautiful and I was a ballerina scheduled to dance the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies during Act II of the Albemarle Academy of Dance Recital. I would be on stage with a slew of other young hopeful ballerinas, all beautiful and thin, in front of an eager audience just dying to behold the utter skill of our performance. And all of us in those tights, the very tights I saw gracing the stage in the big city would smear our legs that delicate pink. 

Ah those tights, so appropriately named! Oh, and me in my pair, with that cruel elastic band meeting my body across the middle in such an unflattering way. My brother said they made me look like two sausage links kinked together. I thought he might be right. “Don't listen to your brother, stockings treat everyone that way. What does he know anyway?” my momma said to me, and that was enough. Then, I found if I pulled the tights all the way up, just below where little mounds were starting to grow, then I would look like only one sausage. This way, the tights held all my little girl goop smooth and in place. I thought they made me look beautiful, and thin. I had ribbons in my hair. I had tender little ballet slippers. I had red lips and rosy pink cheeks and I felt beautiful! I remember momma telling me I didn't need it, the lipstick and rouge, when I told her I wanted her to paint my face. “You're so pretty, baby girl, you don't need to cover up your beautiful face with that stuff!” I can still hear her saying it. Maybe she was right, “but all the other girls would be wearing it,” I told her in my most plaintiff pleading voice. That plastic mud smell of lipstick still makes me think of the look of shock on her face when she had finished and gave me a once-over. “What! Is it beautiful!? Do I look like the Sugar Plum Fairy!?” I asked, excitedly. “Yes, baby girl, you look just like the Sugar Plum Fairy.” Had she said it with a tone of exasperation? It didn't matter, I looked like the Sugar Plum Fairy and I felt beautiful! 

On the way to the Agri-Civic center for my recital, my tights kept sliding down from their place beneath my mole hills and I found it was very difficult to pull them up from outside of my lycra spandex poly blend leotard with the mock corset front. I was becoming exasperated. My brother was in the backseat making fun of me as I tried reaching in from the top, from the bottom, from the outside, all desperate attempts to pull them back up. When we got there, momma told me not to worry about it. “You look beautiful, baby girl, like a prima ballerina!” Still, I went to the bathroom and pulled them all the way back up, stretching them up over my little girl goop piles, up into my armpits, and holding my arms down to my sides with such force that that endlessly squeezing elastic band surely had no chance of escaping back to it's ill positioned place across my belly. I was feeling less beautiful, and less thin as I walked backstage.

Waiting there with the other girls, I began to notice that of all of the girls in my group, I was the biggest, not in length, but in girth. And not just the biggest, I was the ONLY pudgy little girl in my group. They were all much thinner, certainly no chance for sausage kink bellies there amongst my peers. Should my tights dislodge from the grasp of my armpits and slide down, sure enough, I'd be the only sausage kink on stage. I began to panic. My eyes frantically scanned the entire left wing looking for any sign of my chubby kin. It was no use. I was surrounded by beautiful, thin little prima ballerinas and I wanted to cry. I wanted to burst into tears and cry five thousand each for the tights, for the slippers, for the ribbons in my hair, for the lipstick and the rouge and toothpick legs that I would never have. I wanted to run back and tell my momma that she was wrong and it was mean to tease me so and tell me I'm so beautiful and I'm a Sugar Plum Fairy when I obviously was not. I wasn't beautiful and I wasn't thin and there was nothing I could do about it but go on stage and let everyone laugh at the Sausage Plum Fairy. I remember our exit on to the stage, and how my heart must've wanted so badly out of my chest in that moment when I had to decide between lifting my arms and letting those damn tights free or ruining the lines of my dance. I lifted. The tights fell. I became the two links of sausage, kinked in the middle. 

But no one laughed. No one seemed to notice at all. I caught one of the other girl's wide eyes and realized she must be scared, just like me. I smiled and she smiled back, big, and then we danced. Grand jeté and plié, we danced and bowed and made our exit. I remember giggling on stage with the other girls at the end of the recital, waiting for our parents to come and find us. The girl I had smiled at said she liked my lipstick. “It's my momma's,” I said. “It's beautiful!” And with the elastic band still choking me across the middle, I did not feel thin, but I did feel beautiful.

Audrey

You are the kind of joy that never ceases.
Even in between the lines and baby creases,
you are splendid, and beautiful.
I break into a thousand tiny pieces
and Audrey, you may have them all.

Your tiny hands with five long fingers each,
into my heart, the depths of me do reach
and wring me to tears.
I stop for thinking that I'd have something to teach
you about the world, and my fears.

And your little spirit, so eager and new
and hungry for the milk of life, for morning dew,
is magic of the most sacred kind.
I stand in awe of the love that created you;
perfect union, Audrey, in you enshrined.

Growing Pains

Are we too old, then,
for believing in fairies still?
I remember when
you thought one tapped the window sill,

how you shook with fear.
Said I, the oldest and most wise,
“fairies wont come near,
so sleep sweet cousin, rest your eyes.”

We wanted wings, too,
so we sang their chants in the woods
and brought fairy food:
donuts, cake, a slew of baked goods.

Remember the home
we made out of rocks, roots, and moss?
Those things are not gone,
they remain in a pile of loss

of our innocence.
Now we stand trapped by adult thought;
This state, transience,
worse than having no fairies caught.

an embankment at the edge of the woods

You will not find me beneath the stair
for I have given up my playing there
in favor of vines that toussle my hair.

I am not by my brother's side pinned
for I must, too, from his play rescind
else miss the freedom of the blowing wind.

You find me absent from folded quilts
for I found the strength of ancient silts
where the earth a wall of clay has built.

I play no more in Daddy's colognes
for I, for quiet, the house disown
and prefer now the company of stones.

I am not there, high in the hay loft
for I the pleasure seek something soft
and hay could never compare to moss.

In the chicken coop find not you me
for I the haven of bending trees
have sought and dance there with the fairy king.

Return I not, though desperate your call
for I, by the woods, have been enthralled
and in private joy, have forgotten all.

On the man whose boyhood photo seems to say, "help me, I'm hurting."

I know it was a smile that I had seen
in a photograph, maybe you were fourteen,
or even twelve;
but still, looked you not happy to so do.

It seemed a twinkle in your eye that gleamed
was outward put by lies that left you teamed,
between the two;
it was your heart that with your eye did swell.

Or maybe the curl of your lips was feigned
for I have known you owing to disdain,
still I am new;
I can not of your disposition speak.

And for whom's sake, did you conceal the day
that brought you to the point which you could say,
"I am not weak."
"Help me, I'm hurting." Words of strength, from you.

For Another, or Both

Here is one half the pair of my father's lost shoe.
Now there is one where first there were two.
No, before the lie is set, let it be said in tone
that first there was one, but now, the second, alone.
What rambled through cornfield and was lost on the way
has come back, and instead of gone, becomes the way;
for there is nothing to be said for the foot
that but now placed first, was first second put.
That shoe, so gone in proudest eternity, there on a shelf,
becomes the reminder that though through it comes, is not of the self.

thoughts from 28 Sept 2009

Before the true heat of summer comes rushing at my North Carolina home, I thought I'd take a second to look back at how appreciative I was at the breaking of a long, hot, summer:

Cool breeze, cool day, take away the heat of this summer's journey.

Chill the coals burning for something else,

something not here.

Let the wind blow and take with it

the foul stink of sweat and tears
spilled from too many days

of hate and despair. 

Make my air move.

Make me leave this state of mind.

Take with you, sweet cool air, my stagnant destitution

and days and nights of asking.

Cool breeze, cool day, awaken these sleepy hot senses

made dead by the exhaustion

of breathing thick air in and thick air out.

Lungs, breathe deep today. 

Inhale,

all the way down,

fill up with good ice.

Take this fire out.

Sweep away with the fallen leaves and dead grasses

my hot hot heart and leave me

refreshed.  Alive.  

Awake and ready to go another season long

in this body and mind,

and soul,

that was thought surely defeated

by the long hot summer behind.

one day in class

What?  We are not scholars?
This is almost pointless.  who will know?

to whom!?

Most days sitting and chatter
or other things, maybe too
but mostly
just sitting. and chatter.
I'm not even listening to you.
Your voice is nothing.
or rather, something, maybe too
but mostly I'm just
sitting here, not listening
to you
or anything you say

"Pointless?"
yes, it is.
but still.
I'm sitting here.
Not Listening.