I was myself when I danced. I could speak and be heard in the silence of my feet moving beneath me. I’d long outgrown my pointe slippers, but I danced like I used to anyway. My toes bent at an unnatural angle, my arms floating like feathers in the air. I stretched my neglected muscles in ways they no longer recognized, reveling in the tearing and aching and bruising of my body because at least it amounted to something. Lately, I’d been feeling it for no good reason at all.
