Borderline

Post-Performance
(A Sestina)

You’ve hinged in half. Humans don’t fly,
so how can you? Your dance pulse is weak; sores
are colossal tonight. And this is your dream:
to dance, you remind yourself. You say
“These sequins, sautés, scabs, are all I want,”
but at night you have secrets.
Projected onstage you rip hearts, hatch love—it’s no secret.
And there is no tinted magic as a fly
settles on your calluses and you want
a fresh body. You half-heartedly slap balms, anoint sores.
But the stagehand is calling, “They say
please repeat the performance. It was a dream.

Are the red vessels in your eyes a dream?
You want more moonlit glissades. You want the secret
that is beneath gossamer wrap skirts and tights. You say
“What do I have to do everyday?” Make the body fly,
is the answer, and everything will soar.
You will leap into God’s arms like you want
and waltz with him. He knows how. “I want
this dance,” he will command and not ask. In the dream
he does not have a face, but who knows? The sore
comes when a boy whines and you don’t hear. It’s no secret
you’re whirling light-years away. But your eyes fly
back to your dream—you spin twenty times. Witnesses say

“That was silk ribbon dangling from a kite. Who can say
there was ever anything better? But doesn’t she want
to use her brain, to stop relevéing up and down, a fly
pretending to rise like the sun?” It’s your dream
and you know you are the Russian princess’ secret.
Anastasia is still alive, taking bubble baths to dull the sore.

She has no room for the rubber duck, you none for a shore-
bound duck boy. Choreographers direct, “Say
everything with your limbs but keep your head secret
so the audience will wonder and want
and pay, like they were paying for the dream
of a world they vandalized.” A boy in the bathroom zips his fly

after the show. Backstage on sores, you tiptoe out. You want
powdered faces to say lives changed. You go to dream
in secret you are a real dancer, one of the birds that can fly.