Handwoven lace, spun from a magical spider's web fashioned her posture; veiled were her dreams, old lover's deceptions and all unbridled emotions. Before, as if in another life she has been the lead dancer, the one spinning to the pretty notes, unwinding with the delicacy of her spirit. Poised, she leapt through memories both shiny like sapphire and fragile as opals. Around her was a still, mirroring pond of light. She was a lost feather, floating solo from high above, performing an impromptu pirouette and free falling in the breath of cool northern winds. Her eyes were stained with glassy ice blue tears which solidified as soon as they breeched from their ducts. Snowflakes flew around her and she became cold, landing hard upon the marbled stone beneath her. She lay there and closed her eyes. She wanted to stop the tinkling of a rhetorical melody from her own music box which continued to play beyond her control. She had broken her strongest leg, the one she used to lean on when avoiding painful lyrics that reminded her of her flurrying youth. Her shadow was growing old and her desire to dance began to fade. No hand came to help her up and no one knew that she lay in pain; truth be told she did not long for help. The ballerina knew she was doing all she could to mend her wounds and protect her future from being shattered. From the heavens the moonlight crystalized her beauty, shielding her from surrendering herself all together. Her strength although enervated, would call upon her to rise again. As all folkloric sagas have us to believe "amore-propre" is restored and the beast within is slain or out-witted, the beautiful one's faith is redeemed, and the Prima donna always experiences a reawkening with butterflies swimming around her head and that which was her nemesis is obliterated. The ballerina in this story is glued en-pointe, center stage in a polished oak jewelry box; the golden key is wound and she spins ever so slowly as Lara' s Song resumes. Somewhere my love, within this broken Ballerina her own needs were forsaken without mirth; to see those she love resuscitate their own dreams was a gift for sh#e once again had an honorable purpose.