you carefully, painfully squeeze through a door that refuses to open past 45 degrees, maybe. the hum of fluorescent lighting slips into your ears far before you're able to fully process what you see. bumpy, off-white walls climb up your immediate field of view, fading to mold-gray before meeting with a paneled ceiling. as your eyes track up, you catch small trinkets and slips of paper dotted along the surface, hot topic posters and diagrams.
your gaze shifts to the side and a couple shelves greet you. two white-painted planks, half a meter apart heightwise, lure you in. a stack of lps and cassettes lay atop the bottom; vulfpeck, halley labs and will wood. the upper shelf is dominated by a row of books. you instinctively wince at the small sliver of kafka and sartre.
you pivot a full 90 to find a possum on her bed. dark, curly hair obscures a fluffy white face that gently fades along the sagittal to gray. although the eyes peering back are only half open and the bags under give away her true alertness, she seems more than happy to greet you. an excited paw extends over a stickered chromebook. as you go to shake it, you assess the bed and its contents further. a cheap strat knockoff in starbust lays parallel to its owner, jack cable snaking across the free space into a metal box, itself leading straight back to the laptop.
25 years of social reform