Adagio

Slowing, the oboe swoons in the orchestral swell: if a girl denoting six o’clock, thrusting one leg behind her toward the sky were not enough to make us gasp, that leg imparts momentum to her head’s downstroke so her forehead touches her other knee, all this on pointe—enough to make you fall in love a hundred-fifty feet away. I loved a dancer once, and watching her do that with her body in front of two thousand people I suddenly couldn’t breathe until she’d lift her head once more and lower that leg I knew, and send me on toward death— that firm, amazing leg, those years ago.