Her Last Performance
(aka Lothlorien)
a story by Miles H. Rost

The sway of her foot was the start of everything.

Sandy closed her eyes off from the rest of the audience, as she moved her body to the sound of the music. She wanted this time, this period, to be focused on her and all the good she could do.

Sandy remembered her pain from nine months ago, as she swung her leg around and jumped onto the ball of her right foot. She remembered the stage, and the warning from the front of the house, two seconds too late. She remembered the air below her, the crash onto the metal chairs below in the orchestra pit.

She recalled the pain of the ambulance ride as she twirled once and lept across the stage. The heat and electricity burning up and down her entire right side as she was driven to the hospital she understood well. The words of her doctor, telling her that she would never dance again, and her response of “That never stopped me in the past,” were ringing through her head.

A tear fell down her porcelain face as she remembered the nights of tears into her pillow, and the calls of Psalm 6 from her lips. The cries of being weary, as she worked on walking again; the continued tears as she slept on her bed; the afternoons of crying into the arm of her couch. As she pirouetted in the center of the stage, she saw her friend’s face. She remembered his hands, as they dried her tears and put medicine on her eyes when she had an eye infection as she recovered.

Tonight, though, tonight was it. She was able to make it through, and as she finished with a gentle falling splits, she helped put a cap on the year’s dancing. The crowd cheered loudly at Sandy’s return, the last performance of the year.

She would be back the next year. She would be better than ever.