Your heart is pounding
Your lips are dry
Your voice trembles and cracks
It shatters and breaks
But you cannot hear
For the red hot blood in your ears
Drowns the world in its silky scarlet
20 pairs of glazed eyes stare
Back at you
Back at your awkward stance
And your shaking knees
You itch to glance
Over your shoulder
You itch to check the time
Has it been 3 minutes
Or 3 hours?
Or 3 days?
Meanwhile, I stand before
200 or more
Anonymous observers
Cloaked in the deepest black
Contrasting the blinding whiteness
My voice is strong, it does not bend
It certainly does not break
My stance is certain
Confident
Bold
Memorized words
Pour from my tongue
I do not stutter
I do not shake
But instead I wonder
I ponder how the majority
Fears only dying over this
Those who mock me do so
As themselves
It is their name
Stamped to those words
But I am not myself
I have slipped into another skin
My thoughts are not my own
My words are stolen from the throat of another
Tell me, who do you know better than yourself?
Now let me show you,
How to become someone else
You have a notebook cluttered
With broken, simple sentences
Of another tongue
And your brain aches
Over a quiz
Over a test
Tell me, what’s the Spanish
For a C sharp?
Tell me how you feel
But use no words
Watch my fingers dance
Over just 4 strings
Watch me pull my bow
Fast and slow
Harnessing sound
Making it do as I say
Music is the language of the soul
And I am fluent
You hate math
Numbers are your enemy
Yet I solve without hesitation
A puzzle
A riddle
That puts your colored cube to shame
Do you know
How many counts to give
A dotted eighth note in 6/8 time?
And let me tell you
That’s just the beginning
Two wordless languages
Written on a 5-line staff
Countless dialects to memorize
Merged with a dead tongue
I am fluent in music
You call your teammate
Ballerina
And act likes it’s an insult
But if the blood of your feet
Dyed your green field red
If you winced
With each step
Until you couldn’t feel a thing
Your game would be over
But the ballerina stands on one toe
Just one
And she smiles and spins
As she paints her toes with blood
As the last note is silenced
Her misery is applauded
Darkness greets the stage
She cleans up her feet
She swallows a pill
The stage is lit
The show is not over
The audience hushes
Watching
Gasping
Oohing and aahing
She leaps and twirls
And lands on a toe
But she does not fall
She does not wince
She does not tremble or shake
She is strong
Bold
Confident
Certain
For where she makes room
For error
She makes room for an X-ray
Her toes are black and blue
And red all over
And while your tears would
Carve canyons through your cheeks
Our ballerina
Is back for round two
You mock those who
Watch your every game
Who play your song
Who cheer you on
But the only fanfare you give
Are your laughs and taunts
Your teasing and your mocking
We’re overlooked
But we’re not the underdogs
Band
Orchestra
Dance
Theatre
You call them gay?
Well, bitch
Looks like I’m
A queen.
