Re: Studio: Wren & Ryan
It would be OK if looking was all it was, che. Didn't cost nothing to be looked at - just looked at. It was the swipe of thumb over the bottom lip, speculative, that set her brothers off like cheap firecrackers late night in the street, the low whistle. The long look that made her feel like the plastic crackling over the couch. Cheap.
Ry didn't look at people long. Just enough. Not enough to make it 'bout her, right. There was looking and then there was the kind you did cuz no one would let you touch. Even if you wanted. But her brothers, her hermanos, they weren't here. She didn't miss em much, she could go home, right. To her sister and to her nephew and nieces. Ry, she didn't want kids, even if her belly was concave-flat. She didn't take shit from nobody who promised her sweet-lipped he'd just pull out. Nah, she didn't want to wind up knocked up in a tiny apartment in Harlem, like her sister. Tired of life before it started.
"I come cuz it's home," Ry said simply. It wasn't exactly, right. The posters on the walls weren't peeling with damp and the women at the barre weren't all brown and little and angled-limbs. But it was dancing for the fuck of it, because you wanted to and Ry didn't know how many in company danced because they wanted to instead of needing to do so to live.
"The words are there even if the book's shut, right. Somebody put 'em there, so they gotta mean something." A shrug, an expansive roll of the shoulders. It was like the snap of bubblegum, even Ry's thoughtful didn't come packaged up wistful.
"Makes the ballet better," Ry corrected, as she slid down into splits, easy. Hands on thighs and down, like ice-melting. "It don't make me better. It ain't meant to. It makes me forget, right. Where I'm from. So I come back to remember."
Grin. Floor-level. "Who ain't reading you, your man?" Guess.