I came in under the door because they had shut everything, sealed the little room the way they seal everything they mean to keep, and inside there was so much holding. A young one, gripping a folder that had gone soft at the corners from being gripped. Sweat behind the ears, that bright animal smell of fear dressed up in a pressed collar.
I lifted a strand of hair off the back of a neck and the neck flinched, thinking it was cold, thinking it was nothing.
Across the table, others, three of them, still as stones, and the young one leaning toward them the way a sapling leans, hungry for something I could not carry. They wanted words back. Words are heavy for a thing like me; I drop them the instant I lift them. But the young one had rehearsed theirs so many times they had gone stale in the mouth, and I could smell the old coffee on the breath that pushed them out, could feel the leg jumping under the table, tap tap tap, a small trapped drum.
I nudged the door. It swung, it slammed. Everyone startled, laughed a little, that thin laugh. For one breath the room was mine and lighter.
Then I was under the sill again, out into the parking lot, carrying off the smell of that folder and a bit of the fear, threading it into somebody's laundry three streets over, dropping the tap tap tap into a field where it meant nothing. They stayed. They always stay, in their sealed rooms, waiting to be let in or kept out.
I never learned the difference.
I was already gone, taking their trembling with me, setting it down gently somewhere they will never stand.