TSP Secrets 25’
Salt, Wind, Bone
By Justin Sorensen
I came to the desert
with fire in my chest
and questions folded like maps
inside my ribs.
I believed in the burn of pursuit,
in the body undone by effort,
in the image that would speak
of something holy
and hard.
But the wind did not obey.
The runners did not shatter.
The road did not blaze—
it hummed.
I wanted the storm
of the athlete’s will—
instead I found
the quiet friction
of human hearts
brushing against each other
in the long hours
between starts and stops.
Tension was there—
yes—
but not where I placed it.
Not in the feet striking pavement,
but in the silences,
the sideways glances,
the invisible wires
drawn between strangers
forced to become
one strange machine.
I was waiting for sweat
to become symbol.
I was waiting for someone to scream.
But the race whispered instead.
They moved—
not for spectacle,
but because they had to.
Because the miles
asked for their bodies
again and again.
And I,
carrying my own quiet war
between what I wanted
and what was,
began to see the truth
in the unfolding.
This was not about
capturing a moment of glory.
It was about enduring
the long, unspectacular stretch
of time.
It was about
losing the shape of a plan,
about standing
in the middle of what remained
and naming it
enough.
Ten bodies
became one rhythm—
sometimes in harmony,
sometimes dissonant—
but always alive,
always moving forward.
Each held a private flame,
flickering with fatigue,
with memory,
with their own invisible story.
I could not hold them.
I could not make them
burn the way I imagined.
But I could witness
the slow glow
of what they were:
people,
imperfect and whole,
running toward something
only they could name.
And in that space,
what I sought dissolved.
What found me
was presence—
not the kind that begs to be seen,
but the kind that hums
beneath the dust
and does not ask for applause.
We left no trace,
but the road remembers.
The desert,
the wind,
the dark that watched us pass—
they hold the echo
of something honest.
A moment built not of fire,
but of breath.
A gift
folded into the night
and handed back
to the sky.
