The panel had a water pitcher

The panel had a water pitcher

nobody touched.

I talked about cross-functional strategy,

about managing expectations,

and my armpits were already drafting

a different kind of answer.

I knew it was happening.

That's the part nobody mentions—

you feel the heat, the shirt going,

the evidence spreading,

and you keep talking

about five-year plans

while your body runs

the actual interview.

In the elevator mirror going down

I saw both of them.

Dark half-moons.

One per side.

Proof that something in me

had already answered

before the questions were finished.

I sat in the parking garage on level two.

Engine off.

Twenty minutes.

A man loaded a stroller into a van.

He was calm.

He had somewhere to be.

My hands were dry by then.

The body had moved on.

It always does—

performs the emergency and forgets it,

leaves you sitting in a parking garage

holding the evidence

while it waits

for the next time something matters

enough to make you prove it.