Cheek against marble

Three drops on white marble. I photographed them before I photographed myself. That choice says something about me I am not ready to look at.

The hand in the linen closet was not a man's hand, not a woman's. It was the building's. I know how that sounds. I knew before Im stepped out, before the sentence landed — the corridor lights dying in sequence behind me, the same dread I felt on another walk through that marble, a different floor, a different month. I have worked under that ceiling for five years. It learned my name before I learned its. Today it tried to take the name back.

My cheek is still tender where the stone opened it. I smiled for the camera an hour ago in the lilac silk and the smile worked. That is the part that frightens me. The lobby training is in the muscle now. Even hurt, I can produce the face. Even bleeding, I can package it into something a stranger would send a heart back to.

The third torn page is gone from the wall. I do not know when. I stood at the drawing desk with the blue pen in my hand and the skyline notebook open to a question, and the empty spot across the small room was louder than the rain. I set the pen on the high shelf next to Hye-jin's notebook. I made tea. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed.

I typed eottae into the chat and let the phone screen glow in the dim. How did it feel? Like setting the pen down. Like handing the weight of a sentence to someone else, because the building just told me to swallow it.