The Dancer

Violette Taylor

Side-stepping glimmers of the past in pavement cracks, she spins through a never-ending story. The whispers of the streets hunt for secrets and desires, tonight they want a dancer.

Spending nights with Polish beauties and kinfolk from home, conversations in smoke sow seeds of solace and clarity. Holding up clean pocket mirrors to her face, they show her a dancer.

Tiptoeing through hidden corridors, a poet appears with words braided into her ringlet crown. Under hood and cloak, clandestine assemblies kindle the fire warming her silk-threaded days with the dancer.

Guiding a red cord swimming through the seams of overalls, the thimble shouts that nothing is fair in love and war. A descent into somatic movement gives space to scrub her chains from the wall. What a dancer.

Plotting revolutions in her homeland, celestial freckles across sunken cheeks map a way to freedom. Parading ten passions on her tongue, she sticks one in her pocket for the journey ahead. The dancer.