An Artist's Brush - A tribute to the Dancer

I originally wrote this as a creative writing activity, however when I re-edited and evaluated it I found that it's something I connect to more than I originally thought.


An Artist’s Brush


Her foot,

a painful but beautiful release

it floats across the stage

bearing the weight of the entire world

in her broken and bloodied toes.

An ethereal portrayal,

of the common and extraordinary

in everyday life.

A critical audience sits,

watching and waiting,

jealously wishing for a simple mistake,

entranced and enraged by such

incredible beauty.

What they don’t know,

is that she’s already made it;

trying to share such an experience

with a calloused and uncaring world.

She dances and she’s alive,

blissfully ignorant of the past and the future.

Her life is a time bomb

waiting for the mistake, or injury

that will spell the end.

She unlaces her pink satin shoes,

and numbly wipes the blood off her feet,

drying her tears on unblemished faerie wings.

With her blood she’s painted a story.

Her foot.. an artist’s brush.