The Room After

It wasn't loud.

Just a comment with a particular

angle to it—the kind that lands

and doesn't announce itself as landed.

Somebody laughed, slightly.

Then everyone looked at their notebooks.

That was the part I couldn't shake:

the not-looking.

Like if they didn't look at me

whatever it was hadn't happened.

Or had happened and been settled

without a vote.

I've been going back through it

trying to find the version

where it wasn't about me.

I haven't found it.

I keep finding the angle of it instead—

the way it was aimed just slightly

past my name,

the way a door that doesn't quite close

lets in a draft

and you spend the whole meeting

feeling it on the back of your neck.

Nobody said anything to me afterward.

Not even the usual nothing.

Just the hallway,

the small separate silences

of everyone going somewhere else.

I sat at my desk.

Opened something.

Closed it.