the other one

I keep hearing the receptionist in my head. She said miss to Jolene. She said the other one to me. Like Jolene was a person booking in for a service and I was the thing that had come along behind her that she had to clear off the bench. The secretarial posting — she said it out loud, in front of two white partners walking past, and the word she found for the woman who dresses people for a living was secretary. I have been ranked before. I know what it sounds like when the ranker doesn't even know she's ranking. This one landed in my teeth and I smiled through it because smiling is what I do in lobbies.

The guard's hand on my shoulder. He did not ask. He did not say miss. He shoved and I went backward into brass and the sound my body made against that door was the loudest thing in that whole glass tower. I want to know his name. I want to know which shift he is on, what his face looks like in the lobby camera. I stood in the 6 train bathroom and photographed the bruise from three angles. I don't have a lawyer. I don't even know who I am building a file for. Maybe just for me. Maybe just so it exists.

I stood under the shower until my hands stopped shaking and I had pressed the bruise too hard and the water was running faintly pink at my feet and I watched it go down the drain like I was taking notes on myself.