Four of them at the table, and I am holding all four to their chairs, which is more work than it sounds. The tall one leans back until only two legs of the chair touch the floor, trusting me to catch the tilt, and I do, every time, though he never once looks down to check.
The quiet one has her elbows planted and her head propped in one hand, letting the weight of her skull rest fully in her palm. I take that too. I take the laptop, the four coffees, the crumpled snack wrappers, the phone one of them keeps flipping over and over against the tabletop.
They keep saying strange things. One of them says she is "carrying the whole project." I measured her. She is carrying nothing but herself and a lukewarm coffee, and yet she sits lower than the others, shoulders rolled forward, pressed down by something I cannot find on my instruments. The tall one says the deadline is "hanging over" them. There is nothing over them but a ceiling, which I am also holding up, and it is not moving.
Then the meeting ends badly, and no one says the true thing, and they gather their bags. And I watch the quiet one stand, and I feel her get heavier as she walks to the door. Not by ounces. By something else. She bends as if I had asked more of her, though I asked nothing new.
I do not understand these weights. They register on no scale I own. But I have learned to hold them anyway, the invisible ones, right alongside the coffee and the chairs and the moon out the window.
Whatever it is they carry, I have it too.
I will not set them down.