Miss Lily

She is bigger than life now as life slips away.  She imagines herself an icon, a talisman while driving a new fire-engine red Prius, saving the Earth with every mile. She has replaced the old van with the bumperstickers and reinvented herself once again, emerged anew, a siren, a goddess whose hands are thrown up in jubilation when she departs a room even if the attention has already turned elsewhere.  By day, she leads a troupe of middle school dancers to other middle school stages, insists they call her “Miss Lily” so as not to be confounded by the formality of a surname.  She herself has danced the samba in Cuba, the tango in Spain, the belly dance in Egypt.  She believes in the body’s wisdom yet speaks an inordinate number of languages.  During her summer vacations, she has traveled and lingered by the sea of fiery sunsets and white foam speckling pockmarked sand.  Way past youth, she has taken lovers in their own language, imagining them relishing her large thighs and substantial ass.   Her blonde curls flung back in a headband, she is not afraid of ageing, dances in her tights to world music.  She is Isadora Dunca, a red car, a red scarf,  white dance slippers, a coastline, a handsome stranger, a guilty pleasure.  At night, a hotel room with french doors flung open to a velvet warm night of sparkling stars and sparkling drinks.  In the morning, a balcony of yucca and cactus for Miss Lily.