Sunsets and Ballerinas

You promised that you would watch the sunset with me, but instead you stuck to your sheets like honey in a pot, and while you slept, I watched the sun go down.

I saw the reds and oranges stretch out in a yawn across the sky like a kaleidoscope of dance, I felt thankful to behold such a beautiful sight, but lonely to have to keep its wonders to myself.

As I watched closer, hypnotized to the drama of rising warmth kissed through streaks of creeping nightfall, I saw the reflection of a ballerina, high above the clouds, performing the most dramatic of jeté’s, straddling the boundaries of heaven and earth in her graceful and fantastical dance.

She effortlessly complimented the purples and oranges that twirl alongside her, one last time before the end of the day, I begged her to promise me that she would come back to dance again tomorrow- to be even more vibrant, more miraculous, and more incredible, so I could show you. She curtsied in agreement.

Her promise is what keeps the world safe in the knowledge that whatever else happens, she will be up with the sun, painting the sky with her mystical pirouettes and plié.

Each day, the colors of the sunset would keep their promise and yet, you could not.

Each day, the ballerina would carry out the reds first, as the sun came to the earths center, and she would finish by pulling the same purples and oranges out from underneath her tutu.

You never did wake up to meet her, though, and so she got tired of waiting.

Come nightfall, she too started to stay in her sheets just like you did.

The sun no longer set in grace and couldn’t serve as a reminder that even before slumber, she will give us one last breath of fresh air before we are called back home like stray dogs to an aching kind of love that hurts in ways it shouldn’t.

I craned my head, dependent on her dance to offer hope into the trembling hands of girls like me who can’t find it anywhere else.
It is a sad story that only my eyes could tell, with nobody awake to listen.

As I sit in the grass in complete darkness, where I once would watch the sun dance in euphoric sunshine, I cried, and every day would end in sadness without the promise the sun had kept to hold her colours in vibrancy for your sleepy eyes that would never see past the whites of your bed or the reds of your anger.

I cried to spend the last chapter of day in a dim with only my own arms to give me comfort.

I cried until you got out of bed in the morning and squeezed my neck all the colours of sweetness that your tired eyes never saw.

You squeezed until the ballerina twirled around my skin painting me the same purples and reds she did through the sky a couple nights ago, when you chose to sleep instead.

Oh, I’m so happy you kept your promise.

So happy, I could cry.