Excuse Me

I said excuse me and I stood. I walked

the open floor with my head tilted back,

hand cupped beneath my face. No one talked.

I counted: twenty feet of carpet, track

lighting, the low hum of the printer room.

Bathroom. The industrial paper towel—

rough, the brown kind, the kind they use to doom

your hands to dryness—pressed against. The foul

fluorescent light did what it always does.

I watched myself in it: mouth open, one arm raised

the way you hold a thing because it was

going to fall. The bleeding stopped. I rinsed. I gazed

longer than necessary. Dried my face.

Walked back in. Sorry, I said. I lost my place.