What January Gave Back

The box is still on the nightstand where I put it this morning. White cardboard, the tape I cut curling back from itself, one flap open, the other folded in. I'd ordered it six weeks ago — the same week the papers came through — and it had sat on the floor of the closet since then, still sealed, waiting for me to be ready. This morning I moved it to the nightstand.

That felt like enough for a while. The light coming through the window is the particular white of January in Brooklyn — not warm, not cold exactly, just thin, the kind that makes everything look like it's waiting for something. The radiator ticks. Outside, someone is walking fast on the sidewalk below, and then they're not.

I'm lying on my back with my knees together, the oversized t-shirt I slept in pooled soft around my hips. I used to sleep in things. Coordinated things, with him. I don't know when I stopped being a person who slept in whatever she wanted, but I had, and now I am again, and the cotton against my bare thighs is a small, real thing I keep noticing.

I'm aware of my own warmth before I'm aware of wanting anything. It's already there, beneath the fabric, the heat of my own body held in the thin cotton, and the noticing of it is its own kind of beginning. Six weeks of not thinking about this. Six years, if I'm honest.

A body can go quiet. I had gone quiet. I hadn't understood how completely until this morning, when I moved the box from the floor to here, and something in my chest did a specific thing — not excitement exactly, or not only that. Recognition.

Like the first word of a language I'd stopped using coming back to me whole. My right hand is resting on my stomach. I can feel my own breath move under it. The other hand is at my side, fingers loose against the sheet, which is cool where I haven't been lying.

I look at the box. The flap is open. The wand is inside, wrapped in tissue, still. I haven't touched it yet.

I moved the box, I cut the tape, I folded back the flap, and then I lay down and looked at the ceiling for a few minutes, and now I'm here, and my right hand is on my stomach, and I'm breathing in the thin January light, and my knees are together, and the cotton is warm across both thighs, and I am aware — very aware — of the specific weight of everything I am not yet doing. The wanting is there. It has been there since I opened the flap. It is patient and it is mine and I have not felt it belong to me in longer than I can say.

I exhale. It comes out longer than I meant to give it. My hand moves down from my stomach, slowly, until it rests against the hem of the shirt. The box is still open.

The wand is still inside.