as always after class, looking for happiness

Tuesday, 4:47 PM — your bag hits the floor before the door closes. The fluorescent hum of the classroom still rings in your ears, shoulders carrying eight hours of sitting straight and answering correctly.

Now nobody's watching. You peel back the version of yourself they graded, evaluated, approved. What's underneath runs warmer, moves slower, answers to a different kind of question entirely.

This is the ritual — not reward exactly, more like retrieval. Finding the part of you that spent all day waiting behind your sternum, patient, certain you'd come back for it eventually.