Hidden Dancer

For all the times when you want to know what's going on in someone's head, ask them to paint you a picture with words.  This is what you'd get from me.  I've said on more than one occasion that I feel like a performer at times.  Apparently, as a teenager, I felt more like a statue.  I guess you could call it progress that I can now walk and talk, right?

Lady mistress madam stands

under a soft focus diffused spot

people are murmuring at her feet

“this new life-model motif is sensational”

says one

his woman nods

oddly, she never blinks

her eyes seem, un-naturally, to focus on something

no one can see

on the inside

she’s been here, in this place,

the hallowed marble halls of historical

for years

the rod in her back keeps her from slouching

her wrists are chaffed

from the natural plated rope that binds them

some days, the light focused and warm above her

giver her sporadic hair

a kind of halo glow

other days, it only proves to show how matte and dull it is

the people, viewers, families and tours

are faceless

it could be the same crowd

the same children, the same wide-eyes tours

day after day

some man remarks about her small breasts

trying to seem art conscious

but coming out crude

he blushes and walks on

Her feet, living and pink

are attached to nothing

though she doesn’t return home after a long day at the office

the ropes around her “display”

keep her safe from spectators, them from her

“It’s amazing how she stands there”

says a tour guide,

throwing in his own tidbit of museum trivia

“First day on the job, I swore she’d move

I lost $20 to a pal o mine when she didn’t budge.”

Security knows she’s alive

when the lights go dim, the alarms switch on

and the people go back to their grind

they record her climbing down

from her mock pedestal

untying her wrists and looking around.

At first, that was all she did.

Entered the rooms surrounding hers, looking

There was once when she danced.

The too-long sleeves on her clothes fell to her elbows

as she raised her arms in time to the triumph in her head

her music, only hers, could she hear

snapshots

taken by people who have come to marvel

show her cheeks red some days

as if she’s about to cry

an even as strange and mysterious as the virgin Mary as well shedding tears

other photos show her eyes focused on the living world

she in stillness, changes

living art

caught in an instant of movement and stasis

she, like this, can not exist

but her pedestal bears her weight

and the inspection of passers by.