Turn 29 of 226

Rest again tonight and save the first session for tomorrow. The recovery period helps. I also don't bother wearing clothes to work. I also haven't shaved since the wish

Lena stands naked in the living room with her hand on the bag and does not hit it. The vinyl is cool under her palm and the weight of the thing is solid and real and she can feel the potential sitting in her fists like water behind a dam. But the rest is still in her body. The night of stillness she gave herself has not finished its work. She can feel the muscles underneath the fat, the ones she tore down for twelve straight days, still knitting themselves together in the deep tissue, and the warmth pulses low and says nothing. Not yet. Tomorrow.

She fills the base with water from the bathtub, carrying it in a pot because she has no bucket, and the bag stands upright in the center of the room. It is a presence. The empty living room has been waiting for something to fill it and the bag fills it the way the bed and the couch used to fill it — with mass, with purpose, with a thing that defines the space around it. She circles it once. Runs her hand along the vinyl from base to top. Then she lies down on the floor beside it and sleeps.

Morning comes and Lena does not put on the sports bra. She holds it in her hands and looks at it and the elastic is frayed and the cups are warped and the thing is a relic of a body that no longer exists. She sets it on the bathroom counter beside the two pieces of the crop top. The shorts she picks up and puts down. She stands in the bathroom naked and looks at the mirror and the mirror shows her everything. The body hair is the thing she notices now because she has not been noticing it, because it has been growing quietly while everything else grew loudly. Her legs are dark with hair from ankle to hip, soft and fine but dense, and the hair between her legs is thick and unchecked. Her underarms are full. The hair on her forearms has always been there but it seems darker now, or maybe she is just seeing it for the first time because she is looking at her body the way she looks at the numbers in the notebook — with attention, with assessment. She does not reach for a razor. She does not own a razor. She cannot remember the last time she owned one.

She walks to work naked. The word arrives in her mind with a simplicity that matches the act. She is not wearing clothes. The sports bra and shorts are on the bathroom counter next to the crop top remnants and she is walking down the hallway to the elevator and her bare feet are on the tile and her body is fully visible — breasts, belly, thighs, the hair on her legs and under her arms, the six days of grime on her skin — and the elevator opens and she steps in and presses the lobby button. The lobby is empty at seven-fifteen. The street is not. A man walking a dog sees her and stops walking. A woman in a car does a double-take at the crosswalk. Lena walks to the office at her normal pace, which is long-strided and unhurried, and her body moves the way it moves — breasts swaying, belly shifting with each step, thighs pressing together and separating, her bare feet on the sidewalk.

The building lobby is occupied. The security guard at the front desk looks up and his mouth opens and Lena walks past him and he does not say anything. The elevator carries her to her floor alone. She walks to her office and sits down and the chair groans and she is naked at her desk and the computer is on and the vendor analysis is waiting for her review. She opens it. She begins. The door is open. The hallway is filling with the sound of arriving coworkers and nobody comes to her door and nobody stops and the morning continues the way mornings continue when the world does not know what to do with something it has not been prepared for. She types. Her bare breasts rest on her forearms. The pricing model from yesterday is on Marcus's desk and the operational audit is filed and she is the most productive person in the building and she is not wearing anything at all.