Lee was a dancer once. Now, she was a collector of lost things.
The audience applauded, thinking it avant-garde. Leg Sexanastasia Lee
Dear Torso, it will read. Thank you for the ride. But I've found a better rhythm. Lee was a dancer once
And on that night, when the prosthetic right leg finally gives out, and Lee falls like a broken spire into the chemical canal, Sexanastasia will kick once—powerfully, gracefully, beautifully—and swim away into the deep. Dear Torso, it will read
Sexanastasia trembles. It knows she's lying. It wants her to lie. Because the truth is too terrible: the leg has been counting down the days until it can leave her. And Lee, in her strange, crooked love, has already written its farewell letter.
It began three years ago in the rains of the Lower Penthouses. Lee had been performing The Dying Swan on a stage suspended over a chemical canal. Mid-plié, her left knee locked. Then it turned . It pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees backward, and the foot—still in its satin pointe shoe—began to tap a rhythm that was not in the score. A rhythm like a telegraph key. Like a heart begging to be let out.