The Ballerina In My Music Box

The ballerina in my music box has seen everything. 

Not everything that gets photographed or remembered in stories, 

but everything that happens in the three feet between my bed and the mirror, 

in the minutes when I'm supposed to be getting ready but I'm actually just standing there.

 

She was there the first time I really looked. 

Not at my face, but past it, 

pulling near my temples with my fingertips like I was searching for someone underneath.

 Tugging at my sides as if that would mold my skin like soft clay. 

 

She kept spinning, her tiny painted arms frozen in their graceful arc, 

while I tried to find the version of myself that would make sense.

The music had wound down by then. 

She moved in silence.

 

She saw me cry in that specific way you cry when you're alone, 

the kind where your face does things it would never do in front of another person. 

Ugly, red,

 and twisted up. 

 

She watched from her velvet-lined stage, 

patient as always, 

while I wiped my eyes with my sleeve 

and left dark streaks of yesterday's mascara on the fabric.

 

She was there on the days when I put on lipstick like I was painting something worth looking at, 

when the color made me feel like I had a mouth that deserved to say things. 

She spun while I sang, badly, beautifully, 

loud enough that I forgot to be careful.

 

 My hairbrush became a microphone. 

The bathroom became Carnegie Hall. 

She was my only audience, and she never clapped, 

but she never looked away either.

 

I remember the outfit. I remember standing in it, turning slightly, 

seeing myself from an angle that made everything feel possible. I smiled at her. 

I smiled at myself. For maybe ninety seconds, 

I existed in a way that felt right, like my body and I had agreed on something.

 

Then the feeling came. 

That small violence of recognition, 

the understanding that arriving somewhere doesn't mean you get to stay. 

I took the outfit off slowly, carefully, and hung it back up. 

 

The ballerina watched this too. 

She watches everything with the same expression, 

which is to say no expression at all, 

which is also to say every expression at once.

 

People think keepsakes are about the objects themselves. 

The necklaces, the rings, the little paper fortunes folded into stars. 

But my jewelry box is full of things I barely wear, 

and the only thing that matters is the witness on top. 

 

She has kept time differently than clocks do. 

Not in hours but in versions. 

All the people I've been have stood in front of this mirror, 

and she's catalogued each one with her endless, mechanical spin.

 

She knows the way I hold my breath when I'm hoping. 

The way I bite my bottom lip when I'm deciding whether to be brave. 

She knows the sound of the drawer opening at 2 a.m. when I can't sleep, 

just to wind her up and hear the music, just to remember that some things still work the way they're supposed to.

 

Sometimes I think about what she would say if she could speak. 

If after all this time, 

all these years of her painted eyes watching me build and destroy and rebuild myself in this small space, 

she finally opened her mouth. 

 

But I think I already know.

 

 I think she'd say what anyone who's really seen you would say.

 

I think she'd say: I know. I was here. I saw all of it, and you're still standing.

 

-Nevie Jay