Monday, October 24, 2011

doppelganger 1

Saturday night was for Jenelle and Cheryl and me and Dracula, watching a ballerina as Lucy go from white and pure and flow and grace to red and black and sharp lines and quick movements. Girl's Night Out complete with cosmos, high heels, and laughing.
Sunday it changed. My whole body aged fifty years overnight and I creaked and moaned, and my eyelids could feel the heat radiating from my forehead. i'm bad at knowing how to stop, so i didn't try at first. lunch with out of town friends found me nearly asleep on the table between french toast and rubens, freezing with three shirts on under my black dance fleece. i'm lucky my eyes were still blue and my hair was still long and blonde otherwise they wouldn't have recognized me underneath the pale face resembling Lucy. I drifted home; floated up iron stairs and buried myself under mounds of blankets.
Luckily, I had a double that Cheryl made for me.
She covered for me on Sunday. While I wallowed and drank tea and slept hours and hours, shivering and overheating and shivering and overheating, she had on her purple rain boots and her yellow raincoat, dancing under the gloomy sky outside, being the sun when none appeared. not for me, not then, not when my head was too heavy for my neck muscles to support. She tap danced time steps in puddles and let her hair flow around her elbows.
it was nice that i could look at her and know that i could take a day to let my body fix itself. she holds her umbrella high and winks at me, and my pale cheeks flush with a smile and i wink back.
i'll dance with her soon.

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