I found her in the bath tub. She was half sunk, and her whole body was stinging pink. The water rippled where her flesh was exposed, a quiet rising and falling of tide over the bloom of her belly and breasts with each of her shallow breaths. It pooled in the hollows of her clavicles and in her belly button. Her hair curled damp against her forehead and clung to her temples. She had her eyes closed, and her ears below the waterline. I wondered, briefly, if she could hear her own heartbeat; if the slow sounds of her life were somehow magnified by the water. I knelt beside her with a towel on my lap and waited for her to acknowledge me.

I loved watching her be. The moments were few and far between, but there were times during which she would knowingly let me gaze. I knew how she felt about it, that she wanted to cover her chest with her arms, or turn onto her side. The part of her body that I knew best was the space between her shoulder blades. The smooth plane of it, the suggestion of vertebrae beneath her skin. She turned her back to me more often than not, in sleep and in moments of intimacy. It took a while before I learned to let her do that. Finally it dawned on me that she thought of the upper back as the one part of the body which remains the same from girl to girl. The one part of her I couldn't wish was different.

I never really understood the way she felt about her own body. She seemed to love herself unconditionally, to truly think she was a gorgeous piece of flesh. She took such care. She was in awe of her biology and revelled in her own homeostasis, in ways I'd never known anyone to. More, she really did believe that she was beautiful, an excellent machine. But there were these moments, these horrible moments when we were together. I would be above her, or beside her, reaching a hand out to hold a part of her, and she would suck in air and hold her breath. It was as if, by touching her, I was trespassing on sacred ground. And for a few moments she would set her jaw; I could almost hear her convincing herself that this was what she was built for, that my hand here meant I loved her, or wanted her, or both. And then she would suddenly flush, her hot face showing me shame. This incredible sadness would take over her.

I think, now, that it was more about the way she didn't look; as though she wished she could be what I wanted, and was embarassed that she wasn't. As though she thought there was something she should be doing that she wasn't. She had decided, without consulting me, that she fell short in my eyes.

I learned to watch her. I watched her while she cooked, while she ate, while she sat typing at her computer. I watched her sleep. These were the only times I was able to get my eyes on her without her searching my face, wondering what faults I was finding. I realize now that I talked a lot then about hot girls and dirty sex. That she must have felt as though she was in competition with the pornography on my hard drive; a competition she, necessarily, would have found herself losing. There was no way to argue against that, because she was not like those girls. But I watched her in a different way completely. I knew she wanted me to tell her that she was beautiful, but I didn't know how.


So when she let me look at her in the tub, I knew what it meant. And when she finally stood up, dripping on the tile floor, I wrapped the towel around her. Not because I wanted to cover her up, but because I wanted to be closer to her. I wanted to feel the heat of her skin next to mine, and for her to know that I wanted that. If I had had the words, I would have said them. I would have said, I don't want anything other than exactly you. But even in my head that sounded flat and empty; the words that match the rich tenderness of her do no exist. So instead I kissed her shoulder and put my hand on her back, between her shoulder blades.