(for Melodie Benger)
We strip down to long-sleeved leotards
and layer on baggy grey sweats,
old hockey socks without toes or heels,
groaning down onto the wood floor,
pulling hair back into elastics,
waiting for the moment when
thinking yields to our bodies and the teacher’s voice.
We lie flat and give our weight to the worn wood,
traveling inward on each breath,
muscles unbraiding,
feeling the hot wire linking shoulder and knee,
the release of hips falling open,
giving over to breath, to gravity,
to rhythm, to her voice.
I learn what my body already knows,
the way pulsing blood heats the air around me,
how breath moves my legs and arms,
the pleasure felt in the tremor of aching thighs.
My spine takes me forward,
powerful little bones arching me through space,
muscles contracting to spin out.
She tells us to begin our leaps across the floor.
We gather in one corner,
always reluctant to be the first to leave its safety.
Today, for the first time,
my breath springs me outward
to a place I seem to recognize, and in wonder
I stay here suspended
and finally float down
to see her watching me, knowing.
For years she’s read my body like a flyer’s chart.
When it’s time to talk,
everything will have already been said.
