What the Mirror Shows at Night

The mirror is angled the way I like it — closet door pulled to forty-five degrees, the glass catching the vanity light and throwing it back across the bed in a band of amber. I positioned it before I sat down. That's the part I don't examine too closely: the deliberateness of it, how I knew exactly what I was doing while I was still pretending I hadn't decided yet.

The robe is silk, pale, the kind that looks like nothing on a hanger. Against the back of my thigh it's already warm from my own heat, which surprises me the way it always does — that I've been carrying this temperature without acknowledging it, that the fabric was simply holding what I hadn't admitted to yet.

I sit at the edge of the bed and look at myself in the mirror.

This is the first thing I always do: look. Before anything else. I want to know what's visible from outside before I go inside. The vanity light is unforgiving in the way I need it to be — no shadows doing me any favors, no flattering angle I haven't earned. Just the light and the woman in it and the robe that isn't quite closed.

My hands are in my lap. Right hand over left, which is not where the right hand will stay.

I watch my own face in the mirror and I think: what expression is that. It's the one I make when I'm still in negotiation with myself. Mouth soft. Eyes tracking. Not performing yet — or performing the version of myself that hasn't started performing yet, which might be the same thing. I've stopped being sure.

The heat in the room is the particular heat of an LA summer night that the window unit gave up on an hour ago. It sits on my collarbone. It presses the silk flat against my sternum. I breathe and the fabric moves.

That breath comes out longer than I meant to give it.

I watch it happen in the mirror — the slight drop of my shoulders, the parting of my lips, the way my jaw softens around an exhale I hadn't planned. I file it. Real, I decide. That one was real. I wasn't making it for anyone.

My right hand shifts in my lap. Not moving yet — just shifting, the weight redistributing, the heel of my palm pressing lightly against the inside of my own thigh through the silk. The fabric compresses. Warms further. I feel the specific resistance of it against my skin, the way it gives without giving way.

In the mirror, the woman at the edge of the bed has her knees together.

I watch her and I think about watching her and I feel the first real pull of wanting low in my stomach, distinct from the ambient heat, distinct from the amber light — something localized and specific and mine.

Her knees are still together.

For now.