What the Light Teaches

She's at my old desk in the photo.

Same window, same afternoon light

coming in low from the west—

orange, October, the kind of light

that made the job feel more significant

than it was.

I used to straighten the desk before anyone arrived.

Pushed the monitor back an inch.

Arranged the pens by height.

As if tidiness were a kind of argument

for keeping me there.

The caption said something warm.

Deserved, probably. She's good.

I stood in my kitchen scrolling up

and back to it, and back again.

Not angry. That's the embarrassing part.

Just—recognizing the light.

The way it came through that particular window

like it was doing me a personal favor,

all those mornings I arranged things

and believed the arrangement meant something.

The light doesn't know whose desk it falls on.

That's not a lesson, exactly.

It's just what I kept looking at.