Floral Maxi Dress in a January LA Bungalow

The dress is still on the back of the bathroom door when I wake up. Six weeks and I haven't moved it, not because I forgot it was there but because every morning I needed to decide what it meant before I decided anything else.

This morning I decide.

I take it off the hook without ceremony and slide it over my head, over nothing, and the cotton lawn settles against my skin the way light cotton does — immediate, weightless, present everywhere at once. The small printed flowers press flat against my sternum. The hem finds the floor. I have worn this dress for him, in front of him, with his eyes on me in the bathroom mirror while I fastened earrings I no longer own. I am wearing it now in the January light that comes through the east-facing window, the thin winter kind, the kind that doesn't commit, and I am wearing it for no one.

That's not right. I'm wearing it for me.

I sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress is still on his side too, still a whole mattress, and I am sitting on my edge the way I always did — habit I haven't broken yet, or maybe I just like the distance, the whole width of the bed behind me, available. The skirt collapses inward between my thighs when I sit, a soft gather of cotton holding the warmth that was already there. I didn't know it was already there until the fabric told me.

I look at the bathroom door. The hook where the dress was. Empty now.

The silicone is on the nightstand. I put it there last night knowing this morning was coming, knowing the way you know a thing you've been building toward without naming it. It's the same color as nothing in particular — not flesh, not fantasy, just a clean deliberate object that belongs to me. I bought it after the papers. I haven't used it yet.

I rest my left hand flat on my own thigh, on top of the cotton. The fabric is thin enough that the warmth of my palm comes through almost immediately. I press, just slightly. Not enough to be anything yet. Just enough to know the pressure is mine to apply.

My right hand reaches for the nightstand.

The exhale that comes out is longer than I meant to give it — unfolding into the quiet room, into the thin January light, into the space that is only mine now. The back of my neck is warm. The dress is barely there.

I let the skirt fall open across my thighs.

On the bathroom door, the empty hook catches the light.