Tag: Stefanie Leigh

On the One-Year Anniversary of When my Husband and I Separated by Stefanie Leigh

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

On the One-Year Anniversary of When my Husband and I Separated

I slipped on the bottom step
at midnight, the wood corner
a jackknife, my wail thrown
as far from my abdomen as
my diamonds from my finger.

For two weeks, I shivered,
the ice packs numbing my ribs,
hip bones. My spine craving
the warmth, tenderness, I used to
dream about for twenty years.

As I laid in bed, stiff, sinking,
I stared at the door frame
imagining old lovers coming in,
the different ways their eyes, hands,
lips, once melted, or stiffened,

my limbs. I looked them up,
remembering dimples, voices. But,
avoided one. The one whose soft gaze
was seared into my cells, my throat
still wanting, always wondering—

I willed myself to sit up, dripped
pills onto my tongue before
wrapping my waist so tight, I
could finally breathe without wincing.
I drove my body to the studio,

my mind already in pointe shoes
as I gripped the barre, my soft tissue
still tender, but the ache gone
back to the spot behind my sternum,
where a scream cannot be heard.

*

Stefanie Leigh is a poet and ballet dancer based in Toronto. She holds a BA from Columbia University and was a dancer with American Ballet Theatre. Her work has been published in Rust & Moth, ONE ART, SWWIM, The Inflectionist Review and elsewhere. She can be found on Instagram @iamstefanieleigh

Two Poems by Stefanie Leigh

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Stilling of Movement

After your class ended, and all the dancers bled
into gossip, fouettés, stretches,
and Band-Aids, you sauntered over to the corner,
lifted my fingertips and pulled, so my hips slid
further, further, further over
the box of my pointe shoe, and I hovered

over an abyss. My back
leg extended long, high, quivering. If you let
go, I would fall. So, your words
held my waist like a corset and sweat
pooled at my neck as I gulped down the echo
of the now-empty studio—

How eighty dancers evaporated—my mind
and eyes laid down on the Marley. I lowered
my leg, came off pointe, and you released
my hand, but not my presence, and my knees
knocked together beneath your breathing
and I wondered what else you expected me to do.

*

My Therapist Said, No Amount of Healing Will Make a Toxic Environment Safe

Sixteen years after leaving my ballet career—my soul
and bones no longer bleeding—I was back at the barre

three times, then four, then five times a week, angled in,
balancing in passé. Now forty, my chest eventually

remembered how to stack above my pelvis, arms
extended, my left ankle anchoring me to the Marley.

I was perfectly still, the piano pedaling through my
intestines, when a fog I didn’t know was covering

my gaze dissipated. I breathed forward,
not even an inch, expanded from the inside, into

a world I had only ever watched from behind
a scrim. After barre, one of the elderly ladies came over,

Dear, you always look gorgeous, but something
is different. Like you have a full outline—for the first time.

*

Stefanie Leigh is a poet and ballet dancer based in Toronto. She was a dancer with American Ballet Theatre and is currently working on her first poetry collection, Swan Arms. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rust & Moth, SWWIM, Frozen Sea, Thimble Lit and elsewhere.