I'm on the verge of running late. I'm standing in front of the only full-length mirror in the house. It needs to be cleaned, with specks and fingerprints littering the glass. I stand there in the half light; the place is not quite dark enough to turn on the lamps, so the walls bruise purple while the sun sets. There is condensation on the windows. My body clutches the shadows.

The scars on my chest are starting to heal, the weeks rolling by and carrying away more swelling with them. They're a reminder of tissue taken, something else gained in its place. I try on another shirt, fumbling with the buttons. I take it off. I pull another on, draping it over my new body, then take it off again. It is difficult to pick the right thing to wear, to find what feels right. My friend Clem once gave me advice for gender-affirming clothing choices.

‘Wear boxers with feminine clothing, lingerie with masculine clothing.'

It's good advice, but tough to follow when a pile of clothes are growing at my ankles. I watch my body's reflection keenly. I am seeing it as a body not a wound for the first time in weeks, not a stranger for the first time in my life. Despite it being time to go, I cannot stop looking.

My shoulders do not slope forward anymore, no longer hunched from a mix of heaviness and shame. My torso is longer than I thought it was. Despite a gruelling healing process after the operation, my skin has remained soft around the scarring. My heart is now closer to my skin's surface, and when I lie on my stomach I can feel it beating against the mattress. Before, I wouldn't get dressed in front of a mirror, let alone take it this slowly.

Running my eyes over my body, I trail my hands over my skin. A feeling of disgust does not follow. Before, my body felt like a vessel moulded from wet clay. I was unformed, unfinished.

I start hunting around the room. Opening drawers, rifling through bags, picking apart shelves. I am looking for my camera. I haven't used it in years, much less taken a picture of myself. I've rarely felt the desire to chronicle my body below the collarbone, hoping to forget about it, at least for a moment. The absence of that discomfort is so novel. I feel compelled to memorialise this. There are pictures of me in the mirror over the years, nestled in a folder on my phone titled ‘before'. Each time I took one I had the goal in mind of casting off my old self, hoping to meet a new person the next time I came to the mirror.

I think this may be my first ‘after' photo. The camera is under the bed, viewfinder dusty. I

hold it up to my face and watch my body in the mirror through the little window. Soft hips, broad shoulders, chest flat at last. I am just that, a body in a mirror, a body I recognise to be mine. I feel affirmed, reconciled.

I have come home to my body. There's just enough light left to take the picture.

 

 

© Em Readman

 

This story was first published in Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs by Night Parrot Press (2024).

 

Em Readman is a writer from Boorloo/Perth who explores the transient natures of queerness, self, and relationships in their writing.

 

www.nightparrotpress.com