The file that finally closed

I just filed the last document for a case I’ve been carrying since last winter. Not a win, not a loss—just closure. The client’s gone back to their town, where they said the air tastes different. I sat with the silence for twenty minutes after hitting ‘send.’ It wasn’t relief. It was something quieter: the sound of a door closing on a version of myself I didn’t know had been waiting to let go.