Six landings

The hand in the charcoal sleeve. That is what I keep seeing when I close my eyes. Not the plate, not the horn — the sleeve. Whoever came for me dressed for it. Hotel-trained eye: even an attempt like that has fit.

I stepped backward off a curb in Jongno into traffic. A taxi driver I will never see again laid on his horn and saved my afternoon, maybe my life, maybe my ability to sit at this low table tonight and pretend any of this is normal. I want to send him tangerines. I do not even know his face.

The lobby code was changed. The superintendent shrugged. Management. I stood there with my fob blinking red and understood that a phone call had been made and a phone call had been answered and now my floor did not exist for me. Six flights. I counted every landing. By the third my legs were shaking and I told myself it was the stairs. By the sixth I was at my own door with the key still working, and that felt like the only honest thing in the whole day.

I am moving. End of next week. I wrote that on the fourth landing and have not unwritten it. ~~Moving~~ makes me fifteen again, watching my mother pack boxes in Ansan while I pretended not to care which school I'd land in. I do not want to do this again. I do not want to do this again.