Agenda Item Four

I was supposed to be running this call.

My name was on the invite.

Somewhere around the third slide

my thumb found a loose thread at the cuff

and I pulled—

just a little, just to see—

and then I kept pulling

the way you do when the thread

doesn't break the way it should,

when it just keeps coming.

By the time someone said

any other business

I had the whole hem in a pile

on my desk beside my coffee.

My camera was on.

I was nodding.

I don't know what they decided.

I was somewhere else,

methodically undoing something

I had paid for and worn for years.

Satisfied.

That's the word I keep

making myself look at.