Hostile takeover

See you in the board room

Black lace under the minutes.
Glass table.
Twelve chairs.
One jug of untouched water sweating harder than anyone.
naked in the boardroom except for the thought of you climbing my spine with a red pen and no intention of correcting me.
The agenda says governance.
pulse votes otherwise.
Somewhere a projector hums its small obedient hymn.
Spreadsheet cells open like mouths that forgot discretion.
You count me in without numbers.
Shoulder.
Throat.
Hip.
Nerve.
The room learns choreography from my breathing.
Every policy folds itself into a darker animal.
Risk register licks its thumb and turns the page.
Black lace is not clothing here.
It is punctuation.
dangerous comma between what I meant and what my body has already confessed.

Hands on the table.
Your gaze tightens the air until even the ceiling tiles look away.
There is a burn that is not exercise.
A discipline with no witness statement.
rhythm kept low enough to pass as professionalism.
Outside, someone discusses budgets.
Inside, blood signs everything without reading.
The chairperson asks for alignment.
bite of tongue to stop your name entering the minutes.
Too late.
It is already there in invisible ink, pressed into the paper, warm as a fingerprint left on glass.
rise.
The room does not.
Black lace.
Bare skin.
Boardroom silence.
body makes a hostile takeover of the afternoon.