Random Acts of Poetry

The Ballet Chartreuse

I remember the envy,
the sheer jealousy that
can only be felt by one
six-year-old girl upon seeing
her friend wrapped at the hips
in a haze of pink tulle
over leotard and tights,
feet poised to point to
ballet slippers slung over
her shoulder in a saucy
dare to fourth position,
while I cursed the family
economy that prohibited
dance lessons for me.

However,
my mother’s need for inquiry
made it sensible to require
the bookshelves be beset
with no fewer than four sets
of encyclopedias - in various stages
of completion (being sold at the
rate of one volume per week at
the supermarket) still, each including
Volume Ba to By or some such
designation that meant they
covered the basic positions and
moves necessary for Ballet,
and I danced alone in my living room
to an open Funk & Wagnalls
until she had given up lessons.


30 Lines
Free Verse
For - The Daily Poem 9/3/20
Prompt: Dancing in an unusual place