The quiet after the music stops

The studio is empty by ten. The last girl leaves, the lights stay on for me, and for a few minutes there is only the sound of my own breathing and the soft knock of the piano cooling. I stand in the middle of the floor in a worn warm-up sweater and bare feet, and I don’t move. Outside, Monaco is still bright. Cars, voices, the sea somewhere below the hill. In here it is just the wooden floor and the ache in my calves.
People think ballet is pretty. It is. It is also the only place I have ever been allowed to want something with my whole body and not apologize for it. When the music is playing I know exactly who I am. When it stops, I am just a woman in a quiet room who would like someone to look at her the way the audience does, only longer, and without the lights.
I came from a city that taught me how to leave. Monaco taught me how to stay still. I am still learning which one I am better at.
Most evenings I walk home along the same street. Sometimes I stop and watch the water. I wonder, not for the first time, what a man would do if he saw me there. Would he keep walking. Would he say something ordinary and true. Would he notice that I am not performing anymore.
I am not looking for an audience. I have one. I am looking for the person who stays after the music ends and is not afraid of the quiet.
If that is you, you already know what to write.