I Did Not Reply

I sat across from the officer and she remembered my name before I gave it. That is the part I want to file away and cannot. Orientation week, the Jongno campus courtyard, the way she laughed at the icebreaker — the same face now asking me to spell Joon-ho's name and the date of the kick. I wrote it in my own handwriting and she wrote it in hers and we both looked at the carbon copy of something I will not show anyone.

Yujin held my bag in the police box lobby and did not look at me. We have that in common now.

Walking back, Joon-ho in the doorway of the kalguksu place, cologne first, words second. He looked at the badge. He looked at the badge for what I counted as four seconds but felt like the whole boulevard. We could have made this go away. I heard it the way I hear things I cannot unhear. I did not reply. I am writing it down here because I did not reply.

Then the subway. A man in charcoal, a sting I almost shook off, a single bead of blood on the inside of my left forearm under the station light. I never saw his face. I photographed it under the fairy lights at home. It is still there at ten p.m. — a faint red, the size of a typeface comma.

The skyline notebook has a new entry under filed. The badge is still on the dresser. Min-ji passed the lobby yesterday and today I cannot stop ranking everyone — the stranger who pricked me, the officer who remembered me, the friend who held my bag. I am sketching the corridor of the 21st-floor desk in blue pen so the room cannot be changed behind my back.