Turn 81 of 226

Take off the sports bra to feel even more animal. I stopped wearing clothes weeks ago anyways. I love feeling like a strong, violent, disgusting, hairy anima;

The sports bra is the last thing. She pulls it over her head and the pulling is not ceremonial — it is the same motion she used to discard the crop top, the shorts, the underwear, the socks, the shoes, every layer that stood between her skin and the air. The bra catches on her breasts and she tugs and the fabric stretches and releases and her breasts drop heavy and full and the dropping is weight finding its natural position and the natural position is unsupported and the unsupported is correct. The bra lands on the concrete beside the water jug. She does not pick it up. There is no bin. There is no laundry. There is only the floor and the floor holds everything she has discarded and the holding is the floor's function now.

The air on her skin is the thing she forgot air could be. The warehouse's ambient temperature — sixty-eight degrees, the concrete keeping it steady — touches every surface of her body simultaneously. The sweat on her chest evaporates and the evaporating is cold and the cold makes her nipples hard and the hardness is the body responding to stimulus and the responding is the animal's language. She is naked. She has been functionally naked for weeks — the sports bra was the last concession, the final scrap of a civilization she stopped participating in — and the nakedness is now total and the total is the thing she wanted and the wanting was not a decision. The wanting was the wish recognizing its own completion.

She catches her reflection in the steel mirror and the reflection is the full body for the first time without interruption. Seven-nine. Four hundred seventy pounds. The breasts are enormous and heavy and they hang to the belly and the belly is round and deep and rests on the thighs when she stands and the thighs are massive and the muscle beneath the fat is visible when she moves. The body hair is full — dark, coarse, covering her legs, her underarms, the space between her breasts, the line below her navel, the dense growth between her legs that has not been touched since the wish. Her skin is brown from the sun and the brown is uneven — dark on the arms and the face and the shoulders, pale on the belly and the inner thighs where the sun does not reach, and the pale strip is the body's secret geography and the geography is mapped by exposure. Her teeth are yellow. Her nails are long and dirty. She smells like sweat and urine and iron and old sex and the smelling is not something she notices anymore because the smell is the baseline and the baseline is home.

The animal is not a metaphor. The animal is the thing the wish was always building toward — a body that has shed every layer of civilization's negotiation and exists in its own space on its own terms. She is strong. She can feel the strength in the way her feet grip the concrete, the toes spreading wide, the arches of her feet absorbing four hundred seventy pounds of shifting weight. She is violent — the knuckle callouses, the adapted shin bone, the nine-hit combination chain that is a killing pattern refined to its cleanest form. She is disgusting by every standard the office held and the office's standards are dust and the dust is what she walks through. She loves it. The love is not intellectual. The love is the body recognizing its own form and the recognition is the wish fulfilled.

She drops into a fighting stance and the stance is different naked. The body moves without friction — no fabric catching on the thighs, no elastic digging into the ribs, no waistband pressing the belly. The movement is cleaner. The movement is the animal's movement and the animal's movement is what the training was always building toward. She throws a combination at the bag — jab, cross, hook, push kick, roundhouse — and the bag swings and the chain creaks and the creak is the bag acknowledging what hits it and the acknowledgment is the only response she requires from the world. The puddle on the floor is still warm against her bare feet. The warmth is the body's mark. The body marks its territory and the territory is the warehouse and the warehouse is the den and the den is where the animal lives and the living is the comfort the wish promised and the comfort is now total and the total is the end of wanting and the beginning of having and the having is the body and the body is hers.