The Color of the Room

I was the only one without gray.

In the meeting they talked about mortgages,

about schools, about equity—

all the things you accumulate

when you've been here long enough.

Someone asked me directly.

I answered.

The pause came—small enough to miss,

just a flicker where they were checking

whether I was old enough

to believe what I'd just said.

Then they nodded and moved on.

The senior associate's reading glasses

hung from a chain around her neck,

expensive, the kind that says

I've earned the right to be tired.

I kept touching my own hair,

checking for gray

like it was a thing I could summon,

like if I just believed hard enough

I could age my way into

belonging here,

into the part where I don't have to

apologize for not knowing yet.

There's a strange dread in this—

being young when you didn't choose it,

when all you have is time

and they're measuring you against

how much of it you've already used up,

when the only thing that matters

is the color of your temples

and the weight of your exhaustion.

I'm not there yet.

I can feel them waiting for me to be.