Art – Guiding Light – Nick Harvey

Star’s Waltz The

In an empty theater she spun, sunlight leaking in from the windows, hoping, praying for but a glimpse of blue shadows. The city was silent save for the quiet tap, tap, tapping of her pointed shoes. Twirling and leaping and humming again and again and again with only the silhouette of the unburdened fog to accompany her.

Again. And again. And again. Bones and limbs extending to reach beyond the symphony of an imaginary orchestra that played its melody forever in her mind. The vines, decorated with roses that will outlast even her, crept underneath creaking doors, hoping to become part of the music she seemed so entranced in that her fingers flit on their own, now with their own mind. She drew shapes and created colors that took the form of the stars she danced on, leaping one after the other after the other, around and around in a circle of enchantment that outshone even Lady Moon’s own servants.

More. And more. And more. The fog’s mist dripped with the crystalline tears of her heart, and the blood that wrestled its way through the pure whiteness of the tulle mingled to create shades of violet and periwinkle that decorated her eyes with the smiles of Gods. It held her upright, gentle around the waist and firm around the neck so as to keep her movements beautiful She needn’t worry about breathing, for the music guiding her hands both inhaled and exhaled in time with her cries. Both experienced and not, talented and yet lacking, she continued to spin and twirl Again. And again. And again to the piercing voices of the piano and his conductor, playing the illusions of the stars.

It was a dance that should never have come to be, but was here all the same. Present in the way the silk of her clothes held her in an embrace, trailing after her, fluttering in time with the tweeting of the birds. The sun, too, bore witness and continued to look wistfully on through small cracks in the windows that have yet to be fixed, and probably never will. And all working in tandem, the fog, the stars, the orchestra, helped bring her to face the day again. To experience the chance she has been gifted. To relish in the peace of daybreak, where no one yet has thought to think, and reality is but a blurred line, still overshadowed by the soft dreams of a dancer.

Kayla Gamm, 10 flash fiction Nicholas Harvey, 12

digital art