First Sitting

She had said yes three weeks ago, and the yes sat in her calendar like a stone in a shoe—present, insistent, not quite painful enough to remove. A sitting isn’t bravery, she tells herself. It is keeping promises you make to curiosity.

She prepares the way people prepare for interviews: clothes easy to explain, lotion absorbed so she won’t shine under lights she hasn’t met. From the doorway her apartment looks briefly foreign, as if it already belongs to a woman who does this.

The studio is quieter than she expected. He meets her with a handshake firm and brief—professionalism as kindness. Draped windows, cool air, a chaise waiting like something patient.

When she takes her position it isn’t shame she feels first—it is focus. The lens is a small black circle that becomes the most important eye in the room. She breathes the measured way she learned in yoga and only half believes in, and still it works. She is aware of the wanting before she decides what to do about it.