The Sleeping Beauties

By Sarah Crossland

Selected by Matthew Shenoda

 

The Romanov daughters at the ballet, 1902

 

We heard, of Tchaikovsky’s girls,
that he fitted their slippers with ice—

so that when they danced the rose
adagio, spinning batteries in the air, their landings

always shattered. Backstage, stagehands
cranked the brambles, forming a cerement

of vines. That night we leapt with the canopy
curtains, hypnotized by our own bones,

surviving our falls with the grace
of lice. In 1888, years before

our parents wed, the imperial train
derailed into a potato field luminous

with cowpats and tuber snarls.
Our grandfather held the collapsing

saloon car ceiling on his shoulders
while the royal family fled the leveled

windows. Our father did not know
to fear the wreckage, the hissing neon

cables he gathered in his hands. Later,
that the burns rubied his skin did not

shame him. It is stories like these
that convinced the revolutionaries

that we were prone to miracles—
when asked which of us

would have to die, they answered
The whole litany.

 

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