Yellow Sundress on a Texas Ranch Porch, Midsummer

The full July heat sits on the back porch like it owns the place. Which is fine. So do I.

Six weeks since the papers were signed and I am still learning what that means in small increments — the way I leave a glass on the left side of the sink now, the way I sleep diagonally, the way I bought this dress without anyone's eyes in mind. Yellow. Wide straps. Cotton so thin the sun goes straight through it when I stand facing the pasture, which I know because I stood there this morning just to feel it. Just to feel something directed at me without wanting anything back.

I sit in the wooden chair at the far end of the porch, the one in full sun. The slats are warm through the dress. My thighs press together under the skirt, the fabric gathered between them, holding heat I am only beginning to notice is partly mine.

The cicadas are working hard. There is a low wind that moves through the live oak at the fence line and doesn't make it as far as the porch. I watch the leaves turn their silver undersides up and then settle. I have been watching them for twenty minutes and I have not thought about anything I am supposed to think about.

This is new.

I set my glass of water on the rail. The condensation has made my right hand cold and I press it to the side of my neck without thinking, and the contrast — cold palm, neck that has been sitting in July for an hour — pulls a breath out of me before I decide to give one. I hold still after. The cold fades. My neck stays warm where the hand was.

I put the glass down.

My left hand is in my lap. It has been there for a while, resting on the gathered skirt, not doing anything. I am aware of it the way you become aware of a sound only after it's been happening for some time. The fabric under my palm is warm. Warmer than I expected, or warmer than I let myself acknowledge until just now.

The live oak turns its leaves again.

I have not been touched in longer than six weeks. I have not touched myself in longer than I want to calculate, which tells me the calculation is one I've been avoiding, which tells me something about what the last few years actually were.

My left hand shifts. Just slightly. The skirt moves with it. I feel the hem lift at the inside of my right knee — the faintest drag of cotton, the air underneath immediately warmer than I expected, or warmer than the air deserves to be.

I look at the pasture. The grass is bleached almost white at the top. The heat is pressing down on everything out there and nothing is moving except the oak.

My knees are still together. The fabric is still between my thighs. My left hand rests at the hem now, not lifting it further, just present — the weight of it registering through cotton that is very thin.

The full July heat holds everything still.

I exhale. It comes out longer than I put it in, unfolding into the hot air over the rail, and somewhere in the middle of it I understand that I am going to do this. That I have already decided. That the decision was made sometime between the glass of water and the oak and the dress that no one picked but me.

My knees part. Just enough. The hem falls open across my thighs, and the heat that had been held between them rises, and it is mine.