In her brown leggings and tight black tank top, Dominique seemed halfway a tree already; the gods would have made short work of her. That day, her hair was collected into one thick braid, which hung straight and shiny down her back, like a coal-black spine. When she hopped up into a handstand at the front of the room, the braid flopped to the side, and we saw one wide-open eye tattooed at the base of her hairline. We all stopped looking at the eye when she raised one arm out to the side and then rose to the fingertips of the other, her only connection to the earth the barest bits of skin and nail.

“We are working here to become more spacious,” she said, her voice thick from all the blood running into her head. “In both mind and body. The more spacious you can become, the lighter you will feel.”

The back of my neck prickled. I felt Serena’s hand on my arm, and when I looked up, I saw that her other hand was on Laurel’s knee, and that Laurel and Janet were holding hands. We let go only when Dominique began to lead us through the steps that might, someday, allow us to do what she had done. We kicked and struggled against the wall, lifting our legs, slamming and sweating, thrusting and slipping, trying to become spacious. Trying to become light.

I want to say this: there was so much brazen touching between us that summer. You may have noticed it: Serena’s fingers on my scalp, Laurel’s elbows digging into Janet’s tight shoulders, all of us lifting, pulling, pushing into one another’s hair and skin and muscles. It wasn’t only our small circle either. I had noticed that Harriet loved to pick up Nisha, literally pick her up as though she were a child, and carry her around, Nisha always performing a protest but grinning sleepily. Samantha and Paola often slept in the same bed, twinned and curled like ears, though this might have been something else, a different kind of need fulfilled. Even the staff members thought nothing of touching us: remember the way Magda took my hand, the way Luke tugged on my fingertips. I had no experience being touched in that way, not so casually, with such easy affection. At first, I found it disconcerting, invasive even—but soon I grew to crave it.

Now I see violence in all that touching. Now I see it as a prophecy. Mine, mine, mine, we said. Your body is a toy, a prop, a proof. Give it here, let me put my hands on it. Let me scratch deep into that first layer, catch flesh underneath my fingernails. The change I make will be irrevocable. The change I make will be a declaration. My spit and sweat will mark you mine. There’s nothing casual about it.

This doesn’t mean I crave it any less.