What I Said Instead

The pen was just above the paper.

Not writing. Waiting.

And the coworker had gone quiet

the way a room goes quiet

when a window is open somewhere

and nobody can find it.

I said it might have been me.

The file. The wrong version.

I said it might have been me.

I don't know what that was.

It wasn't generosity.

It didn't feel clean enough for that.

The pen came down.

He wrote something.

The coworker didn't look at me.

I drove home with the radio off

and tried to locate the thing I'd done

somewhere on a map I recognize—

kindness over here, cowardice there,

and something with no name

in the middle.

The pen was still writing when I left.

I don't know what it said.