Wrong Folder

I was looking for the tax folder —

right there in the file list —

and I opened the other one.

I knew which one it was.

One photo. Her face

half in the window light,

mouth open on a word

I'll never get to hear.

The expression is the problem.

I've run through what I know —

happy, irritated, about to say something —

and none of them fit what's there.

I knew that face. I knew it well enough

to have been missing things in it,

apparently.

Which is what the photo is:

proof that I was looking

from the wrong angle

the whole time.

I found the tax folder.

Filed what I needed to file.

The other folder is still there,

not deleted —

which means something

I'm not going to say out loud

in my own apartment

at this hour.