The Particular Quality of Fluorescent Light

October eighteenth.

There is a specific kind of fluorescent lighting they use in community center lobbies, not harsh, exactly, but completely uninterested in flattering anyone. It illuminates everything at the same intensity: the bulletin board, the linoleum, the woman crossing the room with a tote bag on her shoulder. No shadows to hide in. Everything just equally present.

I had finished yoga. I was standing near the entrance doing the thing I always do after class, which is basically just existing for a minute before deciding to be a person again, bag on my shoulder, not quite moving. And then Simone walked through. Not into my class, not toward me. Just through the lobby, mid-stride, carrying a tote bag, wearing her actual regular-Wednesday life on her face. She belongs there. Not to the same Wednesday I know, but to the building. To the space. She crossed the lobby the way you cross a room in a place where you have been going for a while.

three-quarter profile, honest surprise

The thing about seeing someone you know in a room where you only know them one way is that for a second the room sort of belongs to two different timelines at once. She's a person from work. She's also, apparently, a person who goes to the community center on Wednesday evenings. Both of those things are true at the same time and the fluorescent light just sits there over all of it, completely unbothered. We waved. She was on her way somewhere. I was on my way somewhere. The lobby held us both for about four seconds and then gave us back to our separate Wednesdays.

mid-stride, belonging to the room

I don't know why I wanted to write that down. I think it's just that some moments feel like they close something, not dramatically, not with any fanfare, just the soft click of a door that was already swinging shut. The lobby is the lobby. Gerald has a new trailing vine I keep meaning to sketch. The collapsed bowl is still on the windowsill. October is doing what October does.