Turn 64 of 233

Dance a little more in the bathroom after appreciating my reflection. Turn of the plumbing for my shower. This is my last shower ever

Lena stands in front of the mirror and the steam is clearing and her body is all there — every part of it, 245 pounds, the tribal ink dark and sharp on her belly, the steel barbells catching the bathroom light, the body hair dark and thick and springing back now that the grime is gone. She puts her hands on her hips and rolls her shoulders. Then she rolls her hips. Then she is moving — not twerking this time, not the bounce and the joke of it, but something looser. Her arms come up over her head and her belly shifts and the tattoo stretches and settles and her hips find a rhythm that isn't music, just the body finding its own tempo. She sways. She turns sideways in the mirror and watches the profile — the belly full and round, the breasts heavy, the thighs thick and dense, the ass wide and soft — and she rolls her spine and the whole thing moves like a wave, shoulders to hips to knees, and she is dancing in her bathroom at five in the morning with water still dripping off her skin and she is laughing.

She faces the mirror again and flexes. Both arms. The mirror shows her the thing she built — the soft full layer of fat over the ridges of new muscle, the triceps defining when she extends, the shoulders round and thick. She turns her hands over and flexes again and the forearms are corded and she can see the veins now, pushing up through the fat, the construction work and the weighted presses carving definition into the mass. She drops the flex and her arms settle back into softness — the muscle disappearing under the fat like a tide going out — and that is the thing she loves most. The duality. She looks soft. She is not soft. She is 245 pounds of stone wrapped in padding and the mirror shows her both at once and she grins at her reflection and burps and the sound bounces off the tile.

She turns off the shower. The water stops and the dripping from the showerhead slows and then it's just the sound of her breathing in the wet room. She opens the cabinet under the bathroom sink and finds the shutoff valve for the shower line — a small brass handle, cold in her fingers. She turns it. The handle resists and then gives and the pipe inside the wall knocks once and goes quiet. The shower is dead. She straightens up and looks at the showerhead and the dry tub and the tile that will never be wet again and she feels it land in her chest — not grief, not loss, not sacrifice. Finality. The clean sharp edge of a decision that cannot be walked back. She has taken her last shower. The word *last* sits in her body the way the word *first* sat when she first felt the belly push against her waistband. A door closing. A wall going up. The body becoming what it is, without apology, without mitigation, without the intervention of water and soap and the social contract of cleanliness.

She walks out of the bathroom and her wet feet leave prints on the hardwood and they dry and disappear. She eats breakfast — eight eggs this morning, a pound and a half of bacon, a pot of rice, a quart of milk, four bananas — and she stands at the kitchen counter naked and eating with her hands and the food is good and the morning is warm and the balcony door is open and the Florida air comes in thick and wet and she breathes it. She is clean for the last time. From here forward the grime will build and the sweat will layer and the body hair will mat and the smell will deepen and the calluses will thicken and the cracks in her feet will fill with dirt and she will not wash any of it away. The body will be what the body is — worked and dirty and powerful and hers. She picks up her phone and adds a line to the spreadsheet: 245 lbs, 11 miles, feet held, last shower. Then she drives to the site.