I do something I have never done before: Clothing shed, I climb on top of him, legs on either side, and let my body into the light, into full view. I move my body against his, the sensation building between my legs, a heat that will expand, explode. But he is suddenly still, not moving, not touching me.

“What the fuck is this?” he asks. “You’re all fucked up. What are these fucked up marks?”

“No, I just had a surgery that...”

He pulls away from me, the warmth of his body replaced by cold air, by nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t do this.”

Then the familiar symphony: The apartment door shutting quietly, the sound of his car door opening, the engine starting, the rubber, the asphalt, the long silence until morning, the world grinding on the same as ever.

SOME DAYS, I SHED MY CLOTHES AND take inventory of my new body in the mirror.

I am still thin at the arms and legs, brown hair softer and smoother. My eyes glint with a bit of suffering. My lips are still too thin, my jaw more uneven, my ears less noticeable.

My abdomen is flat and smooth now, the rebuilt stomach perfect in shape, taut. But it is marbled with red scars, puckered skin, a mosaic of old stitch work railroading across the flattened land of my stomach.

Sometimes, when I look at myself in the mirror, the world warbles around me, a trick of the eye, as if I am in another life. It feels like staring through heat rising off of the asphalt, the mirage of my new knotless body.

ON FRIDAYS, I SLIDE GOLDEN COINS FROM the velvet pouch. I begin to save some coins in my underwear drawer each week. I save for a vague future that I cannot imagine, but which I can feel coming down on me with the pressure of a burgeoning storm.

IN THE BAR, I PICK UP ANOTHER MAN. This one is short, eyes bloodshot, reeking of old cigars. He doesn’t hesitate on my body.

“It’s all fair play,” he says when I take my clothes off.

He moves against me until he finishes. When he sleeps, he snores. I stare up at the ceiling, still wet.

In the morning, he is gone.

I WAIT FOR MY NEW JOY. I TRY TO SENSE my new happiness like meat in the ground: I press my belly against my bed and wait for happiness to run through my veins like thin gold thread.

My body is slack now, knotless.

At times, I feel limp, worn, a frayed old rope. The photographs flash through my mind: My small knotted body swathed in fabric at the hospital, my mother and her mother before her, me in the yellow lace dress with the pearls around my neck.

There is no photograph of my new body yet. There is no one to take the picture.