Ghost Limbs

Ghost Limbs By Meryl C. Sigaton

Butterflies and luminous skies haze the meshed horizon of haute and murmur.

What pleasure should greet multitudes of pre-dinner boredom; must they dare spectate my condemnation?

Emerging from the velvet veil no red more brilliant, silk organza glisten the molting layers of my grief.

Applause.

She would arabesque by herself— raise a weathered leg up the highest shelf— cherished by the muses; while I am not the resident Giselle, neither local Odette, nor favorite Clara.

“You’re not tinted, not refractive, un-kaleidoscopic.” “You’re just this—just plain glass.”

Now I contrast to that limelight a chasm—a dry empty space. Your crescent pointes’ absence desiccate the waxed maple of this fragile paradise— you sleep instead, the world’s deepest, in overpriced oak; pacified by the anodyne gods: Advil, Alaxan, Medicol.

In futile mimicry, I flit away from your monolithic shade of flawless twirls to moaning ivory keys.

“Cease this passé.”

In the crimson obscurity of the unsunned theater, patience is in the living.

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Ghost Limbs By Meryl C. Sigaton

Bending my toes to the harp, the wine— pure musical ambrosia. To love it, even without the tolerance. Resolute in splendor; nevertheless, in beauty.

Brittle trembling bones and mica contort grin upon grin, unwinding myself from the rust of this meat-bone machinery— opposing to crumble to reservoirs of pain, enough to suffocate many months over.

“If you can’t trust the tutu, the leotard, then why face the mass?”

a minor C, a major D, and then a rest; So much stillness—an easing peace in this haywire hall.

Holding the stance like a pin betwixt prim fingers; clasping a while longer in the hot graces of the spotlight; a hairpin with no immaculate pendant, no blue jewel—and I whisper to myself, “Yes, I shall adorn you. I will dance with you again.”

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Photo by Ma. Micah Dearielle V. Trajera