In the hotel room I took off my dress, examined how the little-worn girdle from years ago tugged me in at the middle, examined the long piece of flesh that was my body, and I felt hope, and I felt contempt, and mainly I felt grief at the waste of all the years, how much my body could have been touched, and yet how rarely it was touched. Perhaps the years should have preserved me like a thing in a museum, but bodies don’t work like that; if a body isn’t touched it falters faster, the yearning is visible at the surface, much as you might try to hide it.
