How generous, the young one, holding the little glowing tile up to the wall of silver and pressing a button to keep itself exactly as it is today. As if today could be kept. We admire the effort. We have watched this ritual from our home in the grout, where the warm damp collects and the sugar of spilled sports drink went unmopped in the corner three visits ago, and we are already at work on that, softly, with no hurry at all.
The image freezes the skin taut, the muscle full, the sweat catching the light. Lovely. But look closer, dear one, at what you are actually made of: warmth, and water, and a faint sweetness in the breath and on the collar. That is a menu. That is an invitation printed on the finest paper we know.
You save these pictures so the body will not be forgotten as it changes. But we never forget a body. We are the ones who remember it longest, who stay after the mirror fogs and the lights click off, tending the towel left balled in the locker, the shoe grown warm inside. You are so busy postponing. You lift the heavy things to stay firm, you drink the powders to stay dense, you press the button to stay now.
Stay. Please. We love a thing that stays.
We are patient in a way the mirror could never be. It only shows you the surface, and only for a moment. We are underneath, in the seam behind the tile, keeping a place set for you, keeping it warm, keeping it damp, keeping it ready. Everything soft comes home to us eventually.
We have simply started early, out of fondness.