The wind blows right through her; the good thing is that she notices.

Each gait cycle or stride has two major phases, a stance phase and a swing phase.

She realises she can’t feel her feet, she can’t feel anything, not even the panic that would probably rush through her blood. What blood? She shivers. The eerie emptiness makes her thoughts scream, echoing ad infinitum in the caverns of her spirit. Alas, actual screaming on the train platform would be inadvisable.

The stance phase starts with a heel strike and ends with a toe-off.

She slams her heels down and digs all five toes into the ground with every step, trying to feel her feet. Trying to feel something. Pain would be nice. She’d feel material, mortal, alive. She balls her fists, shoving her nails into her fleshy palms, and steps on her own toes with intention.

There are many origins of an unsteady gait, such as the joints, spinal cord, and brain. It can also be psychogenic.

Nothing feels real. The world is strange, distant, an old film, a fever dream. She floats immaterial in a body, willing it to move, watching it move, experiencing first-hand that correlation doesn’t equal causation.

Every patient has their own metaphor for conceptualising depression.

It occurs to her that she could jump; there are no screen doors at this station. And that would be that. She drowns in a self-made riptide of thoughts, staring at the yellow line on the concrete, just a step away from the edge.

Despite its attention-grabbing colour, despite having inadvertently crossed it in journeys past—drawing a gentle warning from the staff—today’s the first time she really examines it. It is stippled with iridescence, which is by design, and has an air of bygone glory in its ever-so-slightly ragged edges, which is not. Decades’ worth of footfall tends to have that effect, on warning strips and sapiens alike.

She sits down on a bench, steadying herself with the armrests as the wind sighs.

Distraction techniques can prevent suicide ideation in the short-term.

A reminder of that morning's meeting flashes on her phone. She can't miss it and she’s already a few minutes late. Her feet quit jittering and bring her to the nearest exit, drumming down the steps. Allegro vivace, 176 bpm.

Anyone seeing her leave the station would have observed a normal city girl—a metropolitan pace, a focused face, a heavy gait—an appearance belying her gossamer soul. But there was no denying it, the newfound sliver of direction.

She pens a reminder on the back of her hand: Just a step.

A drop of sweat, an ink bleed, a realisation. She wants to scream. Inadvisable.

Instead, a thought ricochets, “These hands, they are mine.”

But in the long-term, addressing the root of the problem is ideal.

Author Bio: Yumi Tang has about five too many interests given her lack of time (management). These interests make themselves somewhat useful by showing up in her writing. She is a medical student and a research student; she’d never call herself a writer.

If you need someone to talk to, please call the CUHK 24-hour Emotional Support Hotline at 5400 2055, or visit these websites: Sunshine@CUHK and Wellness and Counselling Centre