White Maxi Dress in a New Hampshire Winter Cabin

The snow has been coming down since before I woke. I know because when I stood at the window in the first grey of morning, the pines were already holding it — each branch bowed slightly under a weight that had accumulated while I slept, while the cabin held its heat around me, while no one needed anything from me at all. I am wearing the white dress. The one I brought because it takes up almost no space in the bag and because I couldn't think, when I was packing, of what else a body like mine wears when it is finally alone. It's thin. Cotton-gauze, the kind that shows the shadow of your shape in the right light. The snow light is that kind of light. I've been standing here for several minutes without moving. Not because I can't. Because I'm learning to take my time again. There is a version of this body I knew very well. I knew exactly where everything was, what it wanted, how it answered. Then there is the body I have now — which is still mine, I know it's mine, but the geography has shifted in ways that were never formally announced. New weight in some places. New absence in others. Sensitivities relocated without explanation. I am here for the weekend specifically to perform this survey. To be the cartographer and the territory both. The cold comes off the glass in a thin layer I can feel against my collarbone, the skin above the dress's neckline. That contrast — the cold front of the window, the warmth the cabin has been building in the fabric against my back — makes me aware of my own temperature in a way I haven't been in months. I have been so busy being warm for someone else. My right hand is at my side. I am aware of it the way you are aware of a word you haven't said yet. The hem of the dress rests against the tops of my feet. The fabric across my thighs is light enough that I can feel the slight pressure of my own knees touching — I'm standing with them together, the way you stand when you are still deciding something. The cotton doesn't hold any shape of its own. It simply waits. I watch the snow on the pines. One branch releases its load and springs back, suddenly lighter. The movement is so small and so complete. I breathe in. The exhale takes longer than I expected — longer than the inhale, longer than I gave it permission for, unfolding out of me into the cold air at the glass. My right hand moves to the fabric at my thigh. Not under. Just — to. The flat of my palm against the outside of my own leg, feeling the thin cotton and beneath it the warmth that is already there, that has been there, that I haven't acknowledged until now. Something in my lower stomach contracts. Not from touch — from the decision to touch. The knowledge that I am about to learn something. The snow keeps falling on the pines. It doesn't know what I'm doing. It doesn't care.