A Ballet of Queerness

By: Rahul Bishnoi

I did ballet for three years,

And left and never came back to it.

My tennis coach,

My physio,

My lover,

(Three different people)

Say the same thing when

They see my legs, my hips and my calves

“Oh You Danced”

My father on the other hand, says

“How I wish you have never been born”

And then to take back the dagger a quarter inch

Adds “this way” to the sentence

Ballet bent, broken, shaped my joints

In a very aesthetically irreversible way

I was applauded on stage for

Permanently altering my body

“Art”, was it?

When I want to do the same thing

Not with sustained angular momentum of my body

But with few milliliters of hormones

I am being asked to

Being told to

Being ordered to

Never take off the dress

And keep holding the pose