{"id":570,"date":"2022-01-26T11:30:59","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T11:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/?p=570"},"modified":"2022-01-31T16:09:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T16:09:25","slug":"c-elliott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/?p=570","title":{"rendered":"C. Elliott"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=&#8221;571&#8243; img_size=&#8221;large&#8221; add_caption=&#8221;yes&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221;][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<div class=\"\">\n<div class=\"\">\n<div class=\"\">\n<p>Wild Horse<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I remember standing quietly watching the pounding bodies in rehearsal.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The school was cold and hollow, but the dancers seemed to be the only place of life and possibility.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I joined the school I made sure I became part of those rehearsals.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps I thought it would somehow cancel out the deafening sound of alienation and otherness.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Warmth and sweat of a moving body was instinctual. Survival. Not intellectual.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And it worked for a while. Movement was my home.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But the teacher was mean and stood me up in front of my fellow dancers and humiliated me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You are fat, you are ugly, you are a ringleader.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Those words stuck. Like bleeding leeches for way too long.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Those words ousted me from my own body and hence from my home.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For long afterwards I lived inside a body with no fire.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A broken spirit. Convinced it was gone forever.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But the embers were there. It took a chance meeting, a hit show and following an instinct to see them burn again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I now know that nothing can truly extinguish what is eternally there.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It transcends what we think or feel.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It can just seem like it vanishes into the wind like a phantom horse.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I am older now and my body has changed.\u00a0 I sometimes feel its fragility, that it is no home for the fire that burns within it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That my spirit brings it close to breaking.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But when I dance, and the tiny hand of my daughter slips into mine as she too flails her body to the music<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I sense that the flame passes, from body to body, igniting each one to dance until it can dance no more.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I think it does go on forever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h4>C. Elliott<\/h4>\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\">\n<h4><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=&#8221;571&#8243; img_size=&#8221;large&#8221; add_caption=&#8221;yes&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221;][vc_column_text] Wild Horse &nbsp; &nbsp; I remember standing quietly watching the pounding bodies in rehearsal. &nbsp; The school was cold and hollow, but the dancers seemed to be the only place of life and possibility. &nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}