I wrote this little piece during a writing group. I just came upon several pieces I had written around them, and how interesting, they are all about dance.

March 2007

Dance is breath. Without dance, I cannot breathe. I did not breathe—held my breath—stifled, suffocated for a long, long time. I don’t know how—or why—I awoke each day, one lifeless, danceless foot in front of the other—each day actively or passively mourning the stillness of motion. Each day a battle with hope, hope for healing that would, could, must return me to my dancer’s body, or bludgeoned by cold facts of pain and surgeries gone bad.

I write about the breathless time but it washes through as distant fog. Life explodes now out of my very pores—every breath is dance and joy. I am a dancer. I am dance. I am air and light, and I glow. One may see me in this way on the dance floor but I wind and waltz through all my days, whether in dazzling dancing clothes or old blue jeans. Hope is. Dance is. Breath is. I am.