Overhead

The meeting had gone badly —

not dramatically,

the quiet kind,

where you stop talking mid-sentence

and nobody fills it in.

Afterward I stood in the work bathroom

longer than I needed to.

The light in there is overhead, greenish.

I looked down for a second

and then back up

and there was my collarbone —

visible above the open collar,

the hollow above it shadowed

like a diagram.

Like something labeled

for a purpose I wasn't aware of.

I've been in this body a long time.

I know this part of it.

But in that light, at that angle,

it looked like evidence

of a structural thing —

the ridge of bone,

the skin going slightly gray,

the hollow just

sitting there,

doing what hollows do.

Someone knocked.

I said just a minute.

I looked for one more second.

Then I turned the water on

and let it run

and waited for the sound

to be the only thing in the room.