her secret ambition

that she’d never bared to a soul

could be summed up in one word: ballet.

almost more than she wanted to sing, though you couldn’t really compare the types of dream, she wanted to be a ballerina

of course when after so many years and she

still couldn’t do the splits or learn

how to move her hips she

gave up and

devoted her life to the sedentary pursuit of writing but

every so often when

she hears a piece from the nutcracker

her eyes go somewhere far away and she rises onto her toes and the one pose she remembers from her teacher Celeste

and she’d dream of the white tutus and the girls on the stage who’d fly about like they had wings while she

found ways to trip over the smallest of things

because I guess in life you want what you can’t have

even if at the moment you’re perfectly glad there’s still something

that you wish was different and it’s

sad but that’s human nature I guess.