Choreography

Afterward, your hands
looked criminal. But righteous machines,
the merciless clicking of clocks and cars
whirred on, faithful
to their warranties…
Blood mottled your mother’s moth-gouged sheets.

I had never wanted a child before.
I used to think pain was like a Rome apple,
small and full as a new breast.
The vegetal underwash of green.

Our daughter would have grown fast, like me.
On a Tuesday in April, her ballet teacher
would have smoothed her dark storm of hair
and taken her hand, found me after class:
though young, the girl was ready
to dance en pointe. I would have recognized the teacher’s smile,
the child’s nameless gaze, poised
at my word—at the edge
of form’s liquid slavery—I remember

the pink of sucked-candy satin. The grace purified
in will and pain. We stuffed clotted wool cumuls
into our slippers, felt them darken
as we pushed, arched, turned.

To say I wanted you now would be
a confession: I loved the needle
that scratched the worn Tchaikovsky
that trembled on and bleated out
and would not stop, would not stop playing.

Elizabeth Wyatt

Elizabeth Wyatt

Elizabeth Wyatt is currently alive, well, and writing this bio on a brisk day in Joshua Tree, California. The peaks to the west are glowing with snow, and the wildflowers are very early this year. Eli