What the Cabinet Showed Me

The gown opened at the back.

I sat on the paper-covered table

and waited — not for anything specific,

just for the door.

Across the room: a metal cabinet,

the kind with a surface

that's not quite flat.

I caught myself in it.

The light was overhead and direct.

No warmth in it.

No concessions.

There was the collarbone —

mine, I recognized it

the way you recognize a street

you haven't walked in a while.

It looked different than I expected.

Not wrong. Just — present.

More prominent than the bathroom mirror

at home had been letting on,

with its kinder angle, its practiced softness.

I've been losing weight, or gaining it —

I can't always tell

which direction I'm moving

until something like this.

The collarbone sat above the gown's opening

like a fact I'd been sitting on.

A small shelf of myself.

The light kept going. Made no note of it.

I looked at myself looking at myself

in the warped metal,

the gown open at the shoulder,

the overhead doing what it does —

and thought: so this is the current version.

This is what I am right now.

The door opened.

I said I'd been fine.