Have I been on the train forever? It seems so. What possessed me to leave Moscow and fling myself out into the world? Well, other than needing to leave, and to run, to be anywhere but there.

All must be just so before a performance, measuring the elastics, the ribbons, and then preparing the shoes. They must be firm, but not hard, no pok, pok, pok as she dances across the stage.

And then, what everything has led up to, the performance, a brief, incandescent moment out of time when she seems to defy all natural laws and ascend to the heights of the angels.