izzy

She unfurls like smoke, limbs fluid, eyes little pools. 72 hours in a glass box, cameras winking red from all angles. They call her the origami woman, but I know better. Even as she folds herself into little knots, she can’t be compressed. She floods the room with her smile and my gut wrenches. Her knees click the whole walk home and her toes crack one by one as we fold into each other on the couch to watch Ghostbusters. The TV’s light crumples on her face and I’m twisting around her, my heart contorting into shapes I didn’t know existed. There are angels in her angles.

*

sarah

I dreamed last night of an opera
Where I crouched near the stage, camera in hand
As the trilled notes washed over the crowd
They laughed and laughed
And I thought, oh, this is how you enjoy opera
You see it with rich people.
As I folded myself in the walkway, two men,
Lovers, whispered behind me
‘They want people to go onstage!
Look at the way they’re dancing!’
And before the other could protest,
The whispering man in a pinstripe suit burst onstage
Linked arms with some women in feathered headdresses
And applied himself to the can can.
The dancers tensed, the audience roared
A voice over the loudspeaker chuckled,
Made light of his flush-faced faux pas
The man was lead cheerily offstage.
I felt his partner grow stormy
Brewing the argument that would follow him home.

*