IV · Character

The Pirouette

A six-second video. See-once — the kind that disappears the moment you've watched it. There she was, in her room, in baggy knee-length shorts and a t-shirt that swallowed her. She tried a pirouette, her long brown curls swinging out after her. Six seconds. It was the most adorable thing I had ever seen.

She sent it because she felt like sending it. That was the whole reason. She wasn't asking my opinion. She wasn't auditioning. She wasn't doing it because we'd been talking about ballet. She just felt like spinning, in her room, and she felt like sharing the spin with me.

I watched it once. Then I watched it again. Then I watched it maybe fifteen more times before I let it disappear, smiling stupidly at a screen that no longer had anything on it.

It's been four years. I still see it — the shorts, the t-shirt, the room, the way her curls landed after she stopped spinning. Some videos are six seconds long. Some six seconds last.