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Text Diane about the park. she is excited. Posta photo of the bench. Go home and weigh yourself

The sidewalk is warm and the bags are heavy and Lena's phone is in her hand and she opens the thread with Diane and types with thumbs that are thick and soft and the yellow nails tap the glass. The message is short — sat on a bench in the park and pissed on it and the man on the far bench didn't look up. She sends it and keeps walking and the bodega bags rustle and the gravel is behind her and the sidewalk stretches ahead.

The reply comes before she reaches the corner. Diane: What did it feel like. Lena types: warm. the bench was cold and then it wasn't. Diane: I've been sitting in my office smelling myself all day and I keep thinking about what it would feel like to just let go right here. Lena types: do it. Diane: I might. Diane: I might. Two messages, the same words, sent ten seconds apart. Then: I'm not going to. Not yet. But I'm thinking about it. Lena smiles and the phone is warm and the sidewalk is warm and the body moves and the nails click.

She opens the park photos — the bench, the wet metal, the dark outline of her thighs pressed into the piss, the gravel stained yellow beneath. She posts it to OnlyFans without a caption. The same way she posted the nails. The same way she posted the kitchen. The image speaks and she lets it. The phone goes dark and the bags shift and the blocks pass and the apartment building rises and the stairs are slow and heavy and the door opens and the smell is there — her smell, the apartment smell, the accumulated weeks of unwashed body and food and piss and vodka and weed — and she steps inside and the carpet is sticky and the wrappers are everywhere and the couch has stains and the kitchen floor has stains and the corner of the office has stains and the apartment is hers.

The bathroom is at the end of the hall and the mirror is there and the scale is there — the same scale she stood on the first morning when the jeans were tight and the belly was new. She sets the bags on the kitchen counter and walks to the bathroom and the carpet is warm and her feet are dirty and the toenails click on the tile and she steps on the scale. The digital display flickers. The numbers settle. Three hundred and thirteen. The same as this morning. The same as last night. She stands on the scale and the belly hangs over the display and she can't see the number without leaning forward and the body is warm and the bathroom is small and the mirror is there and the woman in the mirror is 313 pounds and naked and unwashed and the nails are long and yellow and the hair is matted and the teeth are yellow and the body hair is thick and the belly is round and the breasts are heavy and the thighs press together and the woman is her.

The scale hums. The number holds. Three hundred and thirteen and the wish hums and the body holds and the apartment holds and the phone buzzes on the kitchen counter where she left it. She steps off the scale and the display goes dark and the tile is cold under her feet and the bathroom is warm and the mirror is there and she stands in front of it. She looks. She doesn't look away. The body in the mirror is the body she wished for — not the body she imagined when she whispered in the bathroom a month ago, not the small comfortable body she thought she wanted, but the body the wish gave her. The body that keeps going. She lifts her hand and the yellow nails catch the light and the belly hangs and the mirror holds her and the phone buzzes again in the kitchen and the evening begins.