My Lasting Minutes

They see the grace —
the perfect line, the lifted chin,
the dress that floats like breath on skin.
But they don’t feel what lives within.

They don’t feel the sting behind my knees,
or the burn that coils beneath my ribs.
The way my feet whisper blood into satin,
or how my breath breaks…
but I smile anyway.

They say I make it look easy.
God, if only they knew.
Every move I carve in air
was born from something I had to wear.

I’ve starved.
I’ve hurt.
I’ve failed in rooms that never clapped.
I’ve cried on cold floors
with aching toes and taped-up dreams.

But still…
I rise.

Because there’s something in me
that would rather die in motion
than live in stillness.

Out there —
under the lights, before the crowd —
I feel everything.
I feel exposed. Powerful.
Beautiful and brutal, all at once.

And when he lifts me —
not to save me,
but to honour the fire I became —
I am weightless…
not because I’m light,
but because I’ve carried so much.

That’s what they don’t see.
I’m not the role.
I’m not the music.
I’m not the costume.

I am the storm behind the silence.
I am the wound that chose to bloom.
I am every no that I turned into yes.

I don’t dance for them.
I dance because it’s the only way
I know how to tell the truth.