The Flamenco Dancer

The dancer closes her eyes, unable to face it. 

She thought she would have had the courage, but she doesn't. 

She remembers her so vividly, as she impatiently pulls her soft hazel-colored hair away from her tan face,

and intertwines her own small, nimble hand with the girl’s to help her stand back up from her fall.  

As she stands on stage, her ankle pulses with a constant ache. 

But she ignores it, instead masking it with the brilliant stance a dancer should always take.

She recalls the image of her picking out her first flamenco dress- blazing orange, similar to what the dancer was wearing right now.  In fact, her tawny, worn out heels belonged to the other girl as well.  

She would've been proud of her, or at least that’s what her mother believed.  But the girl was not so sure. She would never be as skilled as her, but she didn't want to be.  Dancing embodied her entity, and the girl never wanted to take that away from her-but it would always be something they shared.  

She has practiced the very first flamenco step she ever taught her to perfection.

Follow my lead, she had said as she counted the beat aloud in a tender yet fervent tone:

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3.

She knew the spotlight caught every beautiful and flawed detail about her, 

from the strand of pitch black hair falling out of place to the straight, set posture of her body. 

It was all too much for her: the noisy audience, the deafening, upbeat tempo of the melody blaring all around, suffocating her.  It’s almost over she sighs with relief,

as she slightly drops her face to hide behind the curtain of her memories.

The flash of bright fluorescent lights cutting into the obscure darkness, 

the scarlet red car from the other side skidding on the clear ice. 

The lashing force, the piercing screams, the unbearable pain.  

Her bloodied face, slashed with zigzagged cuts from the broken shards of glass. 

The thin white puffs of her ragged breaths in the frigid air as she tries so desperately to hold on. 

The taste of bitter metallic in the girl’s mouth.  

The grip on her hand, slowly loosening.  She remembers it all. 

It could have been different- she could have swerved to the other lane, been more careful, driven slower.
No. What’s done is done. 

Now the girl can no longer feel anything, terrified of the rush of anguish that will destroy her if she does.
Instead she slowly closes her eyes before the applause shatters her unsettling solace 

and reaches towards the sky, asking, pleading for the chance to grab onto her sister’s reassuring hand once again, and know that all has been forgotten.