Color

A Shot Missed

I caught him right after he'd missed the 8 ball, cue still in his hands, sitting with it the way we all sit with the ones that got away — that single shaft of window light cutting across his face like a moment of reckoning. That's how it goes, I think: you line everything up, you're so sure of the angle, and still the ball rims the pocket and stays out. The reversed lettering on the glass behind him felt right for that — like life read backwards, making sense only after the fact. What I wanted was that hushed, backroom quiet that comes right after you miss, before you've decided whether to laugh it off or rack again.