Writer Unblocked

Recently I watched the superlative Royal Ballet production of Romeo and Juliet, streamed live to Vue cinema. Echoing through the cinema like footsteps from heaven, divine dancing lit the night with an invincible fire, the fire of creativity, sheer beauty that can burn through stony hearts and make an audience cry. Yasmine Naghdi delivered a credible and powerful Juliet, while Matthew Ball excelled as Romeo. Here is my short story inspired by the performance.
**

Julia had dreamt for the past month of this evening, déjà vu massaging her mind as she snuggled, content and excited, in to the comfortable Vue seat. She was to see the Royal Ballet at last!

The story of Romeo and Juliet had mesmerised her nine year old head. The romantic tale was sour and sweet at the same time, tragedy mixed with true love melting on her tongue like a pill to paradise. Her paradise, the one where she could dance.

“Please, p-p-please can I have ballet lessons!” she implored her mother the next day. “I will take less p-p-pocket money! I will do anything! I want to dance so much.”

Then, her first ballet shoes were in her hands, the leather soft to the touch, the ribbons shining with their own inner radiance. Ballet became her life. And as the months passed, her stutter disappeared, like a ballet shoe that no longer fit, to be discarded in the trash. She had never been happier.

Years past. Ballet had ensnared her soul like an addiction. It was all she lived for.
Until one day Julia met Sam. Love pierced her heart, and hid her ballet shoes. He was all she wanted. She watched him from afar, too shy to speak. Then one day he noticed her. He came from a family that did not speak to hers, some childhood quarrel decades before. They began to date, but kept it secret. Their very own Romeo and Juliet romance.

The two competing loves in her life tore at her heart strings, until one day she received the offer to study ballet full-time: five hundred miles away, in London. But could she leave Sam? The dilemma destroyed her happiness, as tears became the nightly norm. Then the decision was made.

Ballet had won, as she had always known it would. Tears turned in to ballet shoe prints, winding toward a future of dance.

*

Years passed with the speed of a corps de ballet on steroids. Julia waited to go on stage, her secret smile bursting with childhood dreams. She had made it! Today was her debut as Juliet. Fantasy would have its finale.

The role fit her like old clothes, familiar and comfortable. Disbelief and dreams entwined in her head, as reality met romance. Then it was the final scene. Juliet slowly awoke from her drugged slumber, to find the poisoned Romeo. Real emotion erupted in her chest, as the tears flowed like a river of repentance. She no longer saw Romeo, it was Sam beneath her. And as her tears fell, despair enfolded her like a black cloak, drawing in the cold. All the repressed pain from losing Sam crushed her heart. As she pretended to stab herself to death, all she could see was Sam. She lay motionless, as the ballet concluded and the curtain came down. So this was the finale to her dreams.

At home later, she stared silently at the bouquet of flowers gifted to her during the curtain call. Tears fell, then slowly dried. She plucked a rose, taking it to bed with her. In the morning, she fingered the rose gently and smiled. This was her dream, this was the life she had chosen. Her happiness unfurled like the rose in her hands. There was no need to look back. There were many more finales to come on this road, and each one would be better. Living the dream was not destined to be easy, but it was worth every ballet step.

She returned the rose to its vase, and stooped to smell the beautiful bouquet. It was the scent of success.

*

In another time, and another place, a grown woman nursed a ballet shoe in her hand, silent tears falling like a winter waterfall. A dream gone too soon, a future that fate threw away. Slowly she rose, hiding the ballet shoe in her closet. It was another day, and every tomorrow hereafter would take her further and further from her childhood dream of becoming a ballerina. Some dreams are never meant to be. But ballet shoes can last forever.

© Can Stock Photo / markara