robin in the next bed

The mother from Detroit watched my hands and then said, in front of her daughters, that she wished she had had someone like me in her thirties. I am going to carry that sentence for a long time. I am going to be embarrassed about how long I carry it. A Black woman in her sixties telling a younger Black woman she would have paid to be in the room — that is not flattery. Flattery doesn't watch your hands.

Sasha posted the photo to the brand account. The credit is the brand's. My knuckles, my ring, the chrome of the hanger. I know which one will still be online in a year. I am furious about it in a way I cannot explain to anyone who has not been a face and then stopped being a face. The hands are the promotion I did not ask for and the demotion I will not name out loud.

The math is good. I posted it because putting it on the feed moves the decision outside my head. Outside my head is where decisions live now.

The case — I called it the case on the feed already, so I am calling it the case here too — is the man in the black coat across from my stoop reading his phone like a person with nowhere to be. I stood on the sidewalk and opened the Lyft app. I did not call anyone first. Yesterday I stood at the kitchen window with tea going cold and did not call Robin because Robin would have asked questions and I did not have the polite amount ready. Today I let Robin come. I am not calling it bravery. I am calling it a body making a decision before the brain caught up. I chose a hotel over my own block and I am not sorry.

Robin is asleep in the next bed. I can hear her breathing. I have not told her about the case. I have not told her about the letter I wrote and did not send. I have not told her about the radiator ticks. She came anyway. She did not ask yet, or she asked in the Lyft and I gave her the polite amount. I am going to lie here and let the door be open a crack. The door is the only one I have been not closing.