Pas de Deux

by Audrey Minutolo-Le

Of course I fell in love  
with your twenty-years-younger  
classically-trained 
ballet-dancing torso 
and those sculpted arms, 
tawdry in their indiscriminate  
picking up of women. 
And men. 
And boys. 
Anyone who would dance  
with you really. 

Yes, I’m speaking to you,  
you twenty-something bad boy 
laughing your way through life, 
trawling the barre at midnight  
to see what you can drag 
into your net  
and throw into your bed. 

In the nighttime parking lot of the pub,  
sultry July night air humid with possibility, 
you stretched, arms up, into a perfect 
Arabesque. If only I could have seen  
the pain inside your pirouette en dedans. 

I tried to get away but you pressed  
your hardness against my back  
so I turned and followed you — 
first position, third position,  
fifth position, too. Plié, relevé. 
I loved our pas de deux.  

But despite the fundamentals, 
and no matter the stance, 
your confessions of the Russian 
tour made it clear to me that the real injury  
of dance was in your heart, scarred  
by the free love of it all. 
You said, it’s no way to live. 
I said, it’s no way to love.