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She had spun for so long that, when her body stopped and her feet planted so as to grow roots, the inertia kept her mind going. Spin again, spin again—it wasn't always malicious, just steadily on the move because that is what it knew to be. And so, even though the wind called her to plant and grow, she found it difficult—and painful, even—that her mind would war against her spirit.

The malicious times were worse. A gut-wrenching yank of a thought—no train was safe on its tracks. One moment it would be chugging along, whistling with the birds, and the next, its me(n)tal wheels would grind and the body of the train would dip against the ballast, the heat of the thought striking up a flame that caught and burned until neurons were ash: Spin until you die.

But she wouldn't. The wind protected her. Some days the train burned and other days it sang. It was just how it was, and every conductor she knew understood that the key was accepting this. Escape wasn't the goal—the tracks were the tracks—but rather, the objective was a sort of equanimity: Let the train roll. Do not be afraid of the fire, for YOU are not the train, nor are you defined by it. It is the wind that calls you by name.

The fire hurts.

—It is not real.

Will it win?

—Wind can extinguish flame, but the flame will never drive out the wind. And know this, a wind strong enough to put out flame is a wind that is felt.

And it was. She couldn't have predicted it, but it came, the wind, so fierce and strong yet gentle and earnest, a love that looked her in the eye of her soul. It kept her up at night, laughing—truly at ungodly hours—it surprised her, this joy, this freedom from the fire, if only for a little while, she said, but so grateful was she that even the possibility of the return of the flame did not scare her.

But it did not come back. Not in the way it had before, or perhaps she simply stopped listening to the screeching, burning railroad. Only the birds sang, and if they screeched, it was a callback, a reminder of the rail noise that was just noise, a reminder that her mind was not the deepest part of her, even in the moments it was the loudest.

Identity came with the wind, and with it her choice: not to run from the burning tracks or even to try to sort them out, to piece together broken railroad ties or restore ashen sleepers, but to sit on the top of the car and, face to the birds, tune her ears and her spirit to the ever-gentle breeze:

You were born to love.

~ S.B., Feb. 4, 2025

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