Yesterday I saw a photo of myself that someone took from behind, back fat and terrible posture wrapped in my beloved green dress with its print of fall leaves and bunnies. But I ate hand-pulled noodles with friends in the evening, and later at the theatre, the woman on the stage cried, I’m fifty-five and I’ve never felt so fucking free, I’m not afraid of anything anymore. This morning my daughter climbed into my bed and told me about the older girl at the elementary school who already wears a bra. And in the afternoon I zipped up the mauve coat—I had waited and waited for it to go on sale—and walked to the school to pick up that same daughter, sipping the last of the iced macchiato. In my reflection in the door of the school, my legs looked thick as adolescent maple trees, all the sweetness of every iced macchiato and the tenderness of every noodle packed into my thighs that shimmied with every step. And they carried my body, undulating with age and luck, forward to meet her.
Abigail Myers writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on Long Island, New York. Her work appears in Best Small Fictions 2025 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Wigleaf Top 50. Her debut short fiction collection, The Last Analog Teenagers, is available from Stanchion Books. Keep up with her at abigailmyers.com.
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