A folder labelled missing

I'm not writing. I've repeated it more times than I'd like since my last book came out in October last year.

I am not going to the writing groups that have turned virtual. I am delivering writing workshops and one to one sessions on Zoom.

So when a friend cancelled an arrangement for me to help her write a letter this morning, I thought I'd scour the desktop.

Is there anything I've forgotten? Anything I've written in a moment I've forgotten? I look in the writing folder I keep. Nothing. I am smarting from an agent's stock reply pretending to be personalised. I know I shouldn't be. So many people who want to be published, who should be published.

I search for a new poems folder. Nothing. I'm stumped now - really, nothing? And then I notice the folder I've labelled MISSING.

Was I trying out a dark, lockdown joke on myself?  There they are. A handful of poems, like the handful of beans I picked the other day, the handful of first blackberries from the tips of green clusters.  I read through and tinker with some lines. Missing. Yes. It fits.