Kayle Lathrop: "Midwest Ballerina"

Midwest Ballerina
They say it comes with the territory: sixteen years of dancing, 
countless rolled ankles, two broken bones, an achilles with chronic tendonitis.

A small price to pay for a principal role in Don Quixote, I thought
at the time. Being able to achieve the perfect sissonne

to feel like Svetlana Zakharova in that very moment. Ruining your back,
pinching nerves and over-extending muscles, during the Arabian variation

from The Nutcracker, but continuing on nevertheless, never batting an eye.
Every time the rain falls, and the storms roll across the corn fields

my bones, all nineteen years of them, ache with arthritis.
But they ache, too, with a longing for a stage to stretch them on,

to yet again feel alive in front of an audience. And part of the territory
is the end of the territory, the day you hang up your pointe shoes,

your body too bruised & battered to continue, though some
do not decline the hip replacement, the ankle surgery.

Each morning you wake to do the chores, you'll see those old,
torn up pointe shoes hanging effortlessly above a shelf of photos,

when you graced the stage in those satin traps.
You'll throw on a flannel, jeans, and work boots, and trade the lessons

taught by the stage for those taught by the Midwest:
Learning to glide like the red-tailed hawk I see daily, how to glissade

almost effortlessly. Like that hawk, I am unsure where this life will take me,
but somehow I always end up in the same place, like clockwork.

I learned from the river to never give up, to hold my ground,
to be strong and independent, from the hog, its teeth seized

on my steel toed boots, to reach for what I want, because that's all it takes.
And the endless fields, the endless roads, the ever present stars

gleaming down above on any given summer night, to never give up,
​even after giving up, to reach for a faith that's just beyond my belief.

Kayle Lathrop was born and raised in Monmouth, Illinois. She currently attends Valparaiso University where she is pursuing a degree in Public Health while writing, dancing, and drinking coffee. A lot of her inspiration comes from her ballet background and her rural Illinois hometown. You can follow her on Twitter @kayledl15, or, you can also keep up with her on her blog.