Still Wearing Black

The light is wrong for this time of day. January does that — it comes in flat and stays, no angle to it, no mercy, just the same pale insistence from noon until the sky finally gives up somewhere around four. I have been watching it cross the wall above the bed for twenty minutes, or longer. I have stopped counting things.

Everyone left this morning. That is the word I keep using in my head — left — as though they had somewhere better to be, which they did. My aunt back to Québec City. My sister to her children.

The apartment is the quietest it has been in a week and the quiet has a texture, something between wool and water, and I am lying on top of the duvet still in the dress. I should have taken it off. I know this. The dress is structured, wool crepe, and it holds its shape even now, even with me horizontal inside it, the hem sitting precisely against the backs of my knees the way it did at the church, the way it did at the graveside, the way it has for three days of being the daughter who holds it together.

The collar is slightly stiff. I became aware of it again the moment the door closed behind my sister — the specific pressure of it against my throat, the way the dress has been performing composure on my behalf all week and continues to do so even now when there is no one left to perform for. My right hand is resting on my sternum. I can feel my own heartbeat through my palm, which surprises me each time I notice it.

That I still have one. That it is going about its business. I am not crying. I was, earlier, in the kitchen, holding my mother's coffee cup because it still smelled like her and then because it didn't anymore, and I cried then.

Now I am in the space after crying, which is its own kind of country — dry and very clear, everything too bright at the edges. The light moves slightly on the wall. A cloud somewhere above the city, passing. My hand moves before I have decided anything.

Down from my sternum, across the wool crepe, and I feel the dress resist slightly — it is not a soft fabric, it does not yield easily — and then my palm settles against the inside of my own thigh and the warmth there is a shock. My own warmth, held in the fabric, waiting. I had not known I was warm there. I had not thought about my body in days except as a thing to be dressed and transported and fed occasionally.

I exhale. The sound comes out longer than I meant to give it, unfolding into the quiet apartment, and something in my chest loosens one millimeter, the way a door settles in a frame. I am not doing this because I want to. I know that.