By: Kira Rosemarie
A Dance of Sisters
Hair dripping honey-like down
Backs sheathed in smoothed elastane,
Both pressed
Like new pants ironed down
To retain clean-cut shapes,
Both stretched
With narrow dancer feet turned down
In perfect-form pointe positions,
Both limited
Only by those deft words slicing down
Through sweetly-growing minds,
Both bound
Together by blood and blonde and coming down
The hills kissed by dirt-smelling Kentucky bluegrass,
Both restricted
By the feminine and those looking down
Their contoured noses at these little girls,
Both confined
In bodies they pinch and poke and tear down
Until maybe there’s nothing left but spun-sinew dancers,
Both stopped
Until the day they finally join hands and walk down
Their own paths with flexed-flat feet,
Both free
Plant me
Plant me a platoon of peonies
Braided roots brazen against dry dirt
A tangle of bursting well-wishes
Combed through hairs of grass,
A growing tribute of gratitude to
Sun-damp soil and the
Tender touch of fingertips.
Solitary in a garden of earthly delights,
The heels of worn hands hewn grooves
Just skimming a surface of decay,
Of microbes decomposing tiny traumas,
The violent piercings of new life
Through the seed-shells sacrificing
Smooth protection for the possibility
Of blooming progeny.
A population of peonies, sweet innocence
In a heady incense, fragrant air
Taut with a tension of longing—
Longing for care drawn deep from
Some guilty sense of owing,
Of quelling verbal violence
With little whispers to torn leaves,
Telling them tomorrow they will be
Closer to the sky.
Kira Rosemarie is a writer and artist from Kentucky currently living in South Florida. She writes short fiction and poetry and was last published on The Dillydoun Review.