The Fluorescent Mirror

August twenty-eighth. There is a specific kind of tired that is not dramatic, it is just the tired of a Thursday, or a Thursday that felt like a Monday, and you are standing in front of a break room mirror trying to determine whether you look like a person who has had enough sleep or merely a person who has applied enough concealer. The answer, on this particular morning, was not the good one.

Simone was doing the same assessment three inches to my left. She had the particular posture of someone who has already decided the shift is going to go fine and is now just completing the formal paperwork of getting ready. I had not yet arrived at that conclusion. At some point she held up her phone and caught us both in the mirror without asking, which I think is the correct way to document a moment that neither person would have said yes to if asked directly. The photo is very honest. I respect it and I do not like it.

mid-sentence, pre-shift energy

The two prints are still propped against the kitchen wall at home. Not placed, not decided, just leaning there at an angle that is starting to feel less temporary than it did the week after the printmaking night. I keep walking past them on the way to the kettle. Gerald's vine has started doing something new near the shelf edge. The window light in the mornings this week has been the kind that makes even the break room fluorescents feel like a comment on themselves.

the simultaneous mirror pause

I do not have a conclusion. That is also a kind of answer, I think. We made it through the shift. I had concealer on my collarbone by eleven, which Simone noticed and did not mention until lunch, which is exactly the right amount of time to wait.