The Fold I Did Not Make

The fold is wrong. I have been opening that baggie the same way for weeks — top edge pinched, thumb in the corner, the same small choreography I do not think about, the way I tie my apron at the hotel without looking. Someone redid it. Someone stood at my closet drawer and redid it, and I do not know which is worse: that they were in the apartment, or that I am now certain.

I keep thinking about the long-tailed jeongs on the page. Almost mine. I have seen my own handwriting enough to know where my pen hesitates, where the tail curves. Whoever wrote it has been watching me write. Or studying me. Or is me, in some version of the world I am not ready to open yet. I rank these options like I rank guests at the front desk, which is to say uselessly, because the ranking changes every hour and none of them let me sleep.

Arc 1. Printed strip. Like a label on a file folder. Like the notes I make on guest preferences. Whoever this is keeps an archive. I keep one now too — I labeled the photo BUILDING in my notes app, my hands steady enough to type, not steady enough to do anything else. The tote is in the closet. The closet is locked. I am aware, the way you are aware of a sound in a house at night, that locking it is a gesture and not a wall.