There’s a new curve to my hip that wasn’t there before. My stomach is softer than it used to be, my breasts a little bigger. My arms and shoulders are less defined. What once was ridge is gentler slope. I stand in the mirror, posture and pose, hold flesh in my hand, fill it.

I turned forty this year, and my body is changing shape. Not so much, but enough that I notice, enough that I know it, enough that what I see in the mirror as I step out of the shower, as I wipe away the steam, looks more like a stranger each day. I can’t make sense of these contours. I don’t understand these lines. I do push-ups despite shoulder pain; I do crunches and curls and planks. I try to fight this metamorphosis, to kill this soft new creature emerging from my skin.

That’s what happens, they say—those who embrace this change, the way their own bodies expand and soften as they age. A rite of passage, becoming more of what they’ve always been, what they’re meant to be. They say it with a laugh, with a smirk, with a smug kind of nod. Welcome to the club.

I don’t want in. I’m not one of them. I’m not what they think I am. I’m no soft flesh to fold other bodies within, pressing them to my breast. I am neither comfort nor care, neither trouble nor tend. I am not a body that carries and holds. I am not a body that bends. I am not the hand for which smaller hands reach. I am not the leg to which they cling. I am not these lush valleys, these gentle rolling hills. I am rock and ridge and plain, a packed-down stretch of earth. I am not this fertile soil, but the hard red clay beneath. I am not the land that people claim. I am land that can’t be kept or named.

And now, my body gives me away. That curve of hip, that softness of belly and breast. Like a rural landscape developed, a city skyline built up and changed. I look out at this new horizon and don’t recognize what I see.

But they do. It’s a shape, at last, they know; a shape they can decipher and name. It’s a word I rarely use, that doesn’t feel like mine.

And yet: I’m letting my hair grow out. For now, anyway. It curls around my ears, falls down my neck, and I like the weight of it. No sharp lines, no fade at the sides; no more buzz of clippers but the snip of scissors instead. My barber uses curl cream now, rather than pomade—to bring out my natural waves, she says, the ones I’ve been hiding for years.

On my birthday, I take myself to the beach. The water is so clear I can see myself in it. Freckles on my nose and cheeks, a gift from my mother. Pale winter limbs turning dark in the sun, the olive skin of my father. My body a shimmering reflection of itself.

Before the trip, I shaved my legs. I considered buying a one-piece suit, something modest for middle age. Maybe what I mean is something more feminine. Something to make my body blend in, dissolve into a crowd. I stuck to my typical uniform instead, board shorts and a bikini top that compresses my chest. Still, I struggled beneath the straps. I stretched against the seams. I covered myself up so no one could see.

But here, at the water’s edge, I strip the layers away. I stand at the mouth of an endless expanse. I step in to my ankles, wade up to my shins. The water is warm, and I walk out further, my hips swinging against the tide. I dive in, then lie on my back atop the waves.

In the water, I am weightless. I am buoyant and fluid and light. I stretch out my arms, and the salt keeps me afloat. I feel the sun on my skin, take a breath and I hold it, hear the ocean in my ears, rock to the rhythm of the waves. For a moment, I am suspended. For a moment, I am held. For a moment, I am shapeless. I am no body at all. I listen to the water, let it carry me.
___

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the essay collection Tomboyland, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, and Oprah Magazine, and recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Bitch, Lit Hub, and Brooklyn Rail, among others, and in Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic (Harper Perennial, 2022). She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Artwork by Kah Yangni