We are already in the room, though no one has invited us, which is the polite fiction we prefer. There is coffee gone cold in the mug by the keyboard, a skin forming on its surface, a first tender handshake extended toward us across the milk. There is warmth from the laptop's underbelly. There is breath, and breath is damp, and damp is a beginning.
The human has done the little ritual: pressed the red circle so its voice cannot travel out. It calls this mute. It believes it has become quiet. But the mouth keeps moving. It says things to the empty apartment it would never say to the glowing faces, sighs a long sigh, mutters a small unkindness about someone named Greg, chews something it did not want the others to hear it chewing.
All of that moisture, all of that heat, all those crumbs of sandwich falling into the warm dark seam beneath the space bar. It thinks it has hidden. It has only stopped performing, and stopped performing is when the settling begins.
We are patient in a way the meeting is not. The meeting wants the next quarter. We want the crumb, the coffee ring soaking into the desk's soft particleboard heart, the humid corner where the wall meets the sill and no one ever wipes. The human hits mute to keep something in. We simply wait for it to be let go.
It will unmute soon and say "sorry, can you repeat that," bright and new again, sure of itself. Say it. Perform a little longer. Every warm room, every crumb, every unswept corner: kept for us, saved for us, offered up in the end. We are never in a hurry.
We are always, eventually, invited in.