Beige

The hallway smells exactly like it did.

Fourteen-year-old sweat. Wax stripper.

Something else I can't name but I lived in it.

A girl with a clarinet case bumped into me

and I couldn't move.

The tile is still that specific shade—

not quite gray, not quite brown,

worn down by ten thousand lockers slamming.

The fluorescent hum is the same frequency

my body learned to ignore

twenty-four years ago.

But I can't ignore it now.

I'm standing in the hallway

watching my son disappear into a classroom

and I'm also standing here

at thirteen,

knowing what I'm about to do,

unable to stop.