Remembering to Breathe

by Calliopejen1, from Wikimedia Commons

I'm standing on a worn wooden floor, marked with dents and silvery grey streaks. Two walls of this large room are lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and the outside wall is covered in large picture windows. It's an unusually warm spring day, and I can feel sweat on the small of my back from the warm-up. I snap my heels together à la Dorothy Gale, and the steel taps on the bottoms of my shoes click pleasantly. The sound blends in to the other clicks around the room as the rest of the class fidgets between songs.