Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

“Just be a machine,” she said. “A machine that eats fire.”

Damn. That is what i should have done.

Human connection had its upsides, but it sure was a lot of work. The risk-reward ratio was low, at best.

It left me thinking a lot about how much what you think you’re going to think matters.

I’d been practicing as inconspicuously as possible. I worked on elements of the course when the guys weren’t looking, mostly because I never wanted them to see me do anything I wasn’t good at.

This is my philosophy. Fail in private. Succeed in public. I wonder if I think this way because I was always proving myself better than a man? Or told that’s what I had to do as a woman?