On Heads of Pins
by Deborah Rosenblum

The angels watch this city from the oversized second story windows of the Joffery Ballet Studio, where they give us all their weary frowns before they head back to dance on the heads of pins. In my bag are my sweat-scented dancing clothes, which I have not washed since I wore them last, each for only a half hour, some slightly less. Soon I will dance too, I without grace through a forest of poles, spinning to avoid clutching hands while picking dirty leaves from sticky fingers.

When I come home those windows will be dark and the angels will be tucked in their beds or dancing on stars, not on window ledges. Do they ascend to heaven when night falls? I will speed by the empty windows in a yellow taxi or a car service. I will not be thinking of angels then. Perhaps I’ll worry about the price of the taxi, or whether the smell of sweat is so profound that tomorrow I need to spend a precious hour in the Laundromat.

Because tomorrow holds valuable time to spend in sleep. The laundry hour may be meant for shopping in stores with prices that will steal from the landlord and pay for things that will hold no value for me, things bought, never worn. And there will be important television to watch. Some precious time must be spent staring at the ceiling or at the photos in my yearbook, at a smiling face that dreamt of acting lessons, in studios with wood floors where the merits of Stanislavski warred the charms of more modern methods, and of attending auditions dressed in beatnik black.

Tomorrow I will glance up at those windows once more and think that I would like to dance like an angel just for a moment. If I could find a pinnacle. There are gates erected against me on the Empire State Building—and two stories are not far enough to fall.

 

DEBORAH ROSENBLUM lives in New York. She has spent the last several years recovering from a terminal case of writer’s block. She was published in the first issue of the now defunct Bastard Fiction, and the first issue of the now defunct Painted Moon Review. She swears it’s coincidence, not her fault.

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