I began as a whisper,
a small, careful release
of neither lie nor truth.
A seed, no bigger than doubt.

I found my first ear, warm and willing.
I coiled like a tiny snake,
shed my first skin,
growing from each retelling.

Oh! I love the coffee-scented breaths,
the cool circulating breeze
from room to room, cubicle to cubicle.
I slid into keyboard keys,
into textbooks, into messages.

Sometimes, they tried to catch me,
the new one, eyes widened, bewildered,
but I have no form, no face,
merely an idea fattening
from each nodding head,
on glances, on shared thoughts.

I am the cold draft on the nape of the neck.
I am the subtle shift,
the distance, the silence.
I am the story everyone knows.

And I grow
to become the established truth.

I opened for the rain.
My skin against the downpour,
ribs exposed beneath two strangers,
forced into this space.
The mist, the cold,
and the overtime work.

My possessor grips nothing but empathy
for him, partially sheltered,
the rain soaking his back.
Her gaze fixed ahead, his on the ground.
My metal spine sang with the drumming drops,
but it was their silence that hummed.

I know the simple truth:
a gesture, a brief moment of shelter.
But I feel another story forming,
one whispered between coffee cups,
one that lingers, unseen.

I am not a witness to this kindness,
but a prop in the scene.
And the script is being written
with every head that turns,
by every person who sees us,
and forgets the rain.

I drank the tap water
in the men's bathroom sink.
It tasted like gossip,
control, and politics.

It lingered too long in my throat—
like a happy pill made of
team buildings and dinners.

All I want is the door,
the tricycle,
and the ride home.