She shows up at the track every night to run in the dark. She’s happy now that it’s getting darker earlier, which means that she can get more time in. She goes out there most every night, except for the nights when there is a full moon and no cloud cover, or when there is a track meet, which isn’t often.

She walks as silently as possible, her shoes barely crunching the dirt under her. She breathes as shallowly as her body will allow. She walks faster, then eases into a jog. She closes her eyes and circles the grass. She knows exactly how many steps it is to the turn, and exactly how much of the circle she should trace.

Then she runs. She leans forward and lets her body’s momentum carry her forward, continually falling face-first, then breaking her fall with a foot, then falling forward again. Now she is crashing downhill, headlong and blurred.

If she were to waste time thinking about it, she would think that she had ceased to have feet, to have legs. She would then think that she had lifted off the ground and taken flight, then that she has begun to come apart. After she thinks this, she will realize that it is not she who has come apart at all. In fact she is more physically present than any other time, and the world itself is coming apart. She doesn’t think any of this, though. When she started out, she knew that if she were to stop and think about it, it would stop happening, and she needs it to happen.

She runs, and she feels shapes gather along the outer edges of the track, all moving as fast as pure thought, but to her they look as slow and blurred as fireflies.

She’s almost there, almost breaking through, almost having it happen around her.

Before her next footfall, she knows it will happen. She has come to a resting point, where the world is no longer a stationary thing that she travels through, but rather she is the stationary thing that the world rushes to meet.

Finally, she thinks as it comes toward her. Things

are simple enough

to make

sense.