BUILDING, 2104, no face

I wrote it in the back of the sky notebook like a forwarding address. 21F, 2104, no face. Three things in that order. The face is the one I cannot stop circling.

I went up because refusing would be noted. That is the sentence I keep swallowing and bringing back up. I went up because a man who works in HR or a man who owns the hotel or a man who is just a guest said my name into a phone and I carried a bottle of red up twenty-one floors like I was born to do it. The door opened and I could not hold his face. I looked at him. I blinked. I looked again and he had rearranged himself into a different man. This happened four times before I stopped counting.

He took my arm above the elbow. The marble caught me on the way in. I made a sound I have never made at work and the corridor stayed empty, which is the part I will think about at three a.m. for the rest of the year. He said I belonged to the building now. I dropped the wine on his floor on purpose and walked out through it and took a photo of my own shoe print in the red.

I did not put the photo in 21F. 21F is the suite folder. This one is BUILDING. I made BUILDING tonight. I pressed frozen dumplings against the bruise on my shoulder blade and the jade plant trembled in the draft from the cracked window and I thought: my mother does not know. The Chuseok silence just got bigger. I am the worst daughter and I am relieved, and I am also the woman who walked out through her own red wine and felt something like victory, and that is the worst part. I felt something like victory.