Excuse Me
by Merit Madden
· 29/04/2026
Published 29/04/2026 20:07
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.