Wooden points of ballet shoes tap against the edge of the grand water fountain that sat outside on the park grounds of Dollette’s Ballet Studio. The water sprinkles and leaps onto my clothes as I take slow steps against the grass with my eyes trained on the tri-tiered marble showpiece.

Her soft hands hold onto my shoulder as she follows my steps on her pointes however, unlike me, she walks around the edge of the fountain while holding onto me for stability. Snowflakes melt the second they touch her warm skin—catching on her long eyelashes and dripping down like nature’s tears.

Fuck. Me.

She was so beautiful; so diabolically angelic. I wanted so desperately to crawl inside her body and find the most shattered and twisted place and love her so painfully hard and deeply until it was the only thing she felt. She laughed as absently and softly as she danced and it sounded like a metaphor I've been trying to write down for years but could never put the right words to paper. It sounded like the sweetest, most breathtaking melody that serenaded the depths of my soul.

The snow spoke quietly, tumbling down from the sky in the dead of the Irish morning—my dove woke up early, proper little ballerina, fully committed. The smell of flowers accompanies the fresh, cold scent of water and snow and it all felt like her.

“Careful, lass,” I murmur quietly, not wanting to shatter the moment but I didn't want her shattering a bone even more.

I've known my ballerina for the better part of a decade now. I was seven and she was six. She danced and I watched every time my Ma forced me to come with her to drop off my sister, Deidra to ballet. One day, an abrupt splash and a blur of pink caught my eye and when I strayed away from my Ma to play Sherlock Holmes, I saw this wee little ballerina sitting in the fountain. Water raining down onto her head. So, in a stroke of childish wit, I asked her, “What’s the weather like over there?”

And I don't think I ever regretted my Ma dragging me around with her ever again.