I tell my boyfriend this on the drive to the party. Each time, I’m peering under the hood of my body and find things I don’t own: lint. Lace socks. A name that grows, like folklore, windmilling green from between the cracks.

He frowns when I’m introduced to his friends and smile, too wide. No longer his indolent girl. In some stranger’s bathroom I recreate the conditions of my transmutation. Like a child discovering her own dress’s secret pocket—

I skirt the body’s edge.