Feel the vibrations in the steel. The dirt around the tracks came alive and started dancing around Heather’s head as she balanced on the right side of the tracks. The grass and weeds started shaking as if they feared for her life and she just hopped from foot to foot along the pulsations. as the train neared, the whistle started blowing.

She did a quick pirouette, her long, light legs twirling gracefully in the chaos, and as she landed just off the tracks in safety, she dropped a penny. She always loved how the weight and momentum could flatten the coin, turning it into smooth oval perfection.

Ten seconds later, the grass stood still, the dirt settled, and she lunged for the penny. The tracks were still warm. The railroad crossing’s clang-clang-clang in the distance slowed faded to a stop. The people in their cars resumed their lives. Heather lay on the wood and dirt and gravel, face turned upward toward the spectacular cumulus clouds, hands clutching the warm, faintly vibrating tracks, and she stared off into the sky.

She needed to think. She needed to grow. She needed to decide. She needed to fly. She needed to be free. But more than that, he needed her and she felt those conflicting needs fissure and crack her soul from her insides out.

The springtime air was cool and sweet. The sunlight alternately bounced off her milky-white skin and burrowed deeply into her, brushing a faint glow across her cheeks. She dressed in denim shorts and a bandeau, draping her long frame in a knee-length shimmery black shawl. She looked like the queen of the night on her way to a desert music festival. She looked like joy and vibrancy embodied.

He didn’t see it.

He didn’t see her charms, the way her face shined when she laughed, the lightness of her being. The delicate way she walked through life like the world was draped in a very fine lace. He didn’t see that she was suffocating. He didn’t see that she was wasting away.

He didn’t see it.

That vernal morning was like all mornings. They woke up. He took a shower and shaved. She walked pasted her long-ignored paints to make his breakfast and pack his lunch. He got dressed and went to the kitchen to eat. She walked past her long-ignored pottery wheel so she could shower and get dressed. They never spoke to each other anymore. They never touched each other anymore. They never loved each other anymore and he didn’t see. She was the warm body next to him. She was a comforting thought.

That vernal morning was like no other mornings. He left for work and she would never see him again. Heather gathered her paints and her sketchpad and went to the riverbank down by the tracks. She spread her shawl out on the ground and meditated, trying to figure out why this day felt so different from all other days, but looked so similar.

She sketched and painted the early afternoon away, with the music of the birds, wind, water, and train playing the soundtrack to her life.

She felt calm and anxious at the same time. She needed to dance, moving her body freely in nature to the sounds of music in her mind. She needed to give herself away. She needed to give herself the chance to let go, empty her mind, and let life take her the way it should go.

She grabbed her shawl and floated to the tracks, walking along one side of them, pretending she was a gymnast on the highest and thinnest balance beam in the world.

She removed her gladiators and swooped herself up to her toes, pretending for a second that she was a ballerina in pointe shoes. She twirled and leapt and danced as the tracks began to vibrate.

And as she laid there between the tracks, reflecting on her day, her life, her eternity, she realized it was time to go.

She couldn’t be in this place of perpetual suspension anymore. She knew that her relationship facilitated staying in the same old place, the same old people forever, and she had to be somewhere else, someone else.

She felt the vibrations and felt it was time to free herself. She knew what must be done. She rolled off the tracks, went back to the riverbank, and collected her things.

She walked back to the tracks and watched the train flying by. She saw the open door. She started running for it.