Adagio

It was fall when I saw her after her disappearance. The leafs fell one by one, following the wind that blew slowly. Some still struggling their hardest, clinging on the twig. The maple trees were covered in red, some were scattered on the ground. Her delicate hand movement caught my eyes, took my breath away, and stopped my feet. It was as if the time slowed down along her movement.

I knew that girl. People said she is a broken ballerina because she couldn't move her legs any longer. I could remember how my heart broken into pieces upon seeing her last performance. Every second of her last dance kept on rewinding over and over on my mind. I had never known being a black swan could be that beautiful.

"What is it again?" I remembered asking a friend about the play.

"Swan Lake."

"And that black swan is a villain, right?"

“Right.”

Her dance was powerful yet beautiful. She was an angry swan but I saw despair behind her every move. I saw a lonesome swan in her steps asking for attention and love. It was as if she harmed her own wings every time she resented other. Because deep down in her heart she didn’t see her own beauty and it made her mad and broken.

I didn’t know how the time slowed towards the last dance. Somehow for me, her every move was performed in adagio. Every scene was spinning in slow motion until she fell on her knees. I could sense her pain from her breathlessness. Her eyes tired, I swore it was about time she fainted.

I remembered after the performance ended, she didn’t come out to bow like the other performers and the next thing I heard first in the following morning from magazine was her injured hip and they said that it was the end of her career in ballet.

But here I stood, near enough to see her figure, I saw her dancing beautifully on her wheelchair. The wind was playing with her long hair slowly, in adagio.