By: Anna George
Dust spattered out and I wondered
for a second if I was dead.
It would happen here, on a
bowing stage where I’d lived,
breathed,
lost.
But the dust floats to the ground.
Glittering gowns and sheen tuxes
stare up at me
and I smile.
I laugh.
I cry for joy,
which I have not held in my
weak, porcelain palms in
decades.
Centuries,
if you look at my
mother and hers before her.
Look at their brown eyes,
dark locks,
dainty, broken smiles.
But I hold the lost treasure in my hands.
It looks nothing like sequins,
piano keys,
sharpened stilettos.
It looks like the little bird
my mother imagined me as.
