I convinced them I was a Degas dancer
so I could sleep in the tea house
between the paper doors of the Art Museum.

I had considered being the handle
of the silver teapot in the
room set for ladies sewed into the
cages of their corsets in the hall
of the Americas-- I could taste my own
skin-- metallic and always faintly earl grey.
They would have known though--
The guards would have picked me
up and told me I was a silly girl
for thinking I could polish
myself like a 17th century teapot.
One guard might say more solemnly
"We've all tried. We've all tried,"
as he placed back the cup I attempted to take 
the place of. I thought that maybe
if I had enough time I could
find myself in the cotton-candy blur
of a Renoir boating trip or 
leaning on the railing of Monet's
bridge over a pond of water lilies
but I've never been blurry enough a
person for that-- I'm not a sunflower 
but I've had my knees cut for enough vessels 
to know that it wasn't worth it
to be in Van Gogh's vase-- though
my hair is ready and wilting. 
I tried to hide in the skeletons 
of a dead knights in the armor 
that told us that death and war
were shiny and stunning and graceful--
that honor was somewhere between your 
chest plate and your sweat that
left rust stains where your scars
should be. There's never been
enough chain mail to prevent
the kind of scars I get. I knew I could
be anywhere in the Renaissance halls--
I look enough like a martyr and we
all have the tendency to draw-on
gold halos in paint meant for model
Titanics perpetually sinking somewhere
for away from revolving doors and
the velvet rope that kept
reminding me that I wasn't an empress 
or a Buddha or a lilting sunflower skull.
It was all for the tea house.
They kept us back too far 
from the tea house and I saw it
and I knew that I had not slept 
since the sixth grade but
that somewhere between those paper doors
and in the dark patience of the Art Museum
that there was a kind of rest that is
reserved for dead things. The kind of
rest that we put plaques and dates on. The kind of
rest for impressionists and colonists
to share over in the great dining 
hall of a British King. They eat cakes
that look almost like Krimpets and
I'll have to tell them to turn out 
the lights when it gets past my bed time.
I'll just be here with everything 
else that's patient and made of paper.
I told them when they asked that
I was just a Degas dancer-- just
another Degas dancer because there were
so many. They told me I didn't look
like a young girl who should be 
dancing for men and I told them 
that Degas liked ruffles and shadows
and lace. I told them that he liked to dance
but let our feet do the work-- his type
of dance was in the fry of a brush
or in the finesse of his thumbs over
a clay chin.  
They shown the flash light in my face
but I sealed my eyes closed
like the lids of urns up the hall
that might have once held ash--
I told them I was a Degas dancer because
I needed to sleep like one--
needed a place to belong with
a name tag that called me by
my maker instead of by my name--
there are so many of us out
there and we were ruffles and only
sometimes share cake with the blurry
women of Monet's arthritic wrists.
The guards knew I wasn't a Degas dancer
but I was close enough for them to click
off their flash lights lock 
the doors to the tea house for the night.
One whispered, "I was one too you know?
I was a Degas dancer even though
I would have much rather descended a 
staircase for the kind of sleep
that only comes from museums 
and the craftsmanship 
of all the dead thumbs.