The way she moves through the office changed by it in the small practical ways that bodies change when they are doing something enormous and ordinary simultaneously.

Her hand rests flat against her stomach.

The same gesture as the bench, the same quiet, protective placement, not dramatic, not performed, just the instinctive touch of a person tending something they are responsible for.

But the quality of it is different now.

On the bench, it was the gesture of a woman protecting something in a world that had just demonstrated how little protection meant.

here at this window with the city spread below her and the succulent on her desk behind her and the matte black card still in the inside pocket of her bag.

It is the gesture of a woman who knows exactly what she is building and has every reason to believe it will hold.

The city below is the same city.

She is not the same woman.

She turns from the window.

She goes back to work.

« Prev