The Boardroom
You could sense the depression floating around the room, created by broken sales pitches and by fingers holding up wrinkled heads. It stemmed from anxious entrepreneurs pleading to silent crowds and tapping chewed pencils against graph after graph. The depression pooled out of the room, carried on sweaty shoulders that heaved in sorrow among isolated corridors; the sadness accompanied red-eyed business men at airport lobbies who were initially planning to fly first class in celebration.
    The stark, beige walls turned their backs to the fallen; the green, flower-accented carpet sneered at lowered heads that looked at nothing else. Perhaps winners, too had locked hands and traded business cards, but that success stayed with them; the defeated, in comparison, spilled emotion from collared sleeves and from hastily pressed flowers in their pockets.
    Through it all, I eyed the man on the podium who smiled, for now, and wondered.