She stares at her naked body in the mirror. She should be satisfied, having discovered nothing wrong. But instead, she feels empty. She knows how other women talk about their bodies with a painful degree of focus. She’s heard them cry about aging as though it were a thief that came in the night and took away everything they were born with, everything they’d fought for. She has seen the way they brawl with their bodies, buffing their limbs with exfoliating gloves and training their stubborn shapes to behave, first at the gym, then by scalpel if the cardio doesn’t take. She understands why beauty feels like something worth guarding for those women. They’ve earned it. But Lena has never worked for her body. She’s never silently begged for anything about herself to change; not really. It just feels like her body arrived one day, then stayed that way, the same year after year. Maybe, she thinks, if she did find something wrong, it wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe then her body would feel like her own.