Hers Now, Morning After

The drawer had always opened in the dark, or with the sheet pulled up, or with one ear tilted toward the hallway for footsteps that no longer existed in this house. This morning, Nora opened it the way she opened a window — fully, without apology, the wood sliding smooth on its track in the yellow nine-o'clock light.

A truck rumbled down the street outside. A neighbor's dog. The ordinary sounds of Silver Lake continuing without her participation. She lay on top of the sheets, not under them, and looked at the drawer's contents without reaching in yet.

Six months. The number felt different in her body than it did in her head. In her head it was administrative — paperwork, a court date, a signature. In her body it was the specific weight of waking up in the center of the mattress, both sides of it hers, the cotton warm from her own heat and nothing else.

She reached in.

The silicone was cool against her palm — noticeably cooler than her hand, than the sheets, than the morning — and she held it for a moment without doing anything else. Just held it. The weight of it was different from what she remembered. More straightforward. She turned it once in her hand, watching the way the light moved across it, and felt something low in her stomach contract before she had decided anything.

Her other hand rested open against her sternum, fingers loose, feeling her own breath move through her chest. She hadn't noticed until now that she was breathing carefully, measuring it the way she used to measure everything in that house — what was too much, what would be noticed, what would need explaining. The exhale that came out next was longer than she'd planned, and audible, and she let it be both of those things.

She was watching the ceiling. The plaster had a crack she'd been meaning to ask about, a thin line running from the window toward the overhead light. She had asked no one about it. She would ask no one about it. The crack was hers.

Her thighs were together, the sheet bunched at the foot of the bed and not touching her at all. She was aware of the space between her legs as a kind of warmth, something that had been waiting longer than six months, longer than the paperwork, longer than she had words for yet.

She brought the silicone down.

Not in. Not yet. The tip of it rested against the inside of her left thigh, and she felt the temperature difference there — cool object, warm skin — and held it still for a moment that stretched. Her knees stayed together. The truck outside had gone. The dog had gone. The room was quiet enough that she heard her own breath pull in short and then stop entirely.

The drawer was open. The light was full. There was no one to hear her, and she was only beginning to understand what that meant.