Feel the vibrations in the steel. The dirt around the tracks comes alive and starts dancing around Heather’s head as she balances on the right side. The grass and weeds starts shaking as if they fear for her life and she just hops from foot to foot along the pulsations. As the train nears, the whistle blows.

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

Ten seconds later, the grass stands still, the dirt settles, and she lunges for the penny. The tracks are still warm. The railroad crossing’s clang-clang-clang in the distance slowly fades away. The people in their cars resume their lives. Heather lays on the wood and dirt and gravel, face turned upward toward the spectacular cumulus clouds, hands clutching the warm, faintly vibrating tracks, and she stares.

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

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

He doesn’t see it.

He doesn’t see her charms, the way her face shines when she laughs, the lightness of her being. The delicate way she walks through life like the world is draped in a very fine lace. He doesn’t see that she’s suffocating. He doesn’t see that she’s wasting away.

He doesn’t see it.

That vernal morning is like all mornings. They wake up. He takes a shower and shaves. She walks past her long-ignored paints to make his breakfast and pack his lunch. He gets dressed and goes to the kitchen to eat. She walks past her long-ignored pottery wheel so she can shower and dress. They never speak to each other anymore. They never touch each other anymore. They never love each other anymore and he doesn’t see. She is the warm body next to him. She is a comforting thought.

That vernal morning is like no other morning. He leaves for work and she will never see him again. She gathers her paints and her sketchpad and goes to the riverbank down by the tracks. She spreads her shawl out on the ground and meditates, trying to figure out why this day feels so different from all other days, but looks so familiar.

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

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

She grabs her shawl and floats to the tracks, walking along one side of them, pretending she’s a gymnast on the highest and thinnest balance beam in the world.

She removes her gladiators and swoops up onto her toes, pretending for a second that she’s a ballerina in pointe shoes. She twirls and leaps and dances as the tracks begin to vibrate.

She lays there between the tracks, reflecting on her day, her life, her eternity, and realizes it’s time to go.

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

She feels the vibrations and feels that it’s time to free herself. She knows what must be done. She rolls off the tracks, goes back to the riverbank, and collects her things.

She walks back to the tracks and watches the train fly by. She sees the open door. She starts running for it.