What I Know About You Now

The slides kept changing.

Someone in the front row was taking notes

on a yellow legal pad,

which felt like it was from a different era.

I was in the third row

directly behind a person

I have spoken to maybe four times —

the kind of acquaintance

where you know the department but not the name,

or the name but not the face,

and you're always choosing one.

For the second hour I looked

at the back of their neck.

Not on purpose.

The way you look at anything

when you've run out of slides

to pretend to study.

They shifted once, around the ninety-minute mark,

and the collar of the blue shirt moved,

and there was a scar

just below the hairline —

pale, old, an inch maybe.

The kind that's been there long enough

that the person

has probably stopped noticing it.

I noticed it.

Now I know something about someone I don't know.

Something that happened to them once,

something that healed,

something they carry around

in every meeting,

every room,

while someone at the front

talks about Q3 targets

and the legal pad person

keeps writing things down.