Reappraisal

In the scanner they show you a picture chosen to hurt, then the instruction: see it another way.

For years the bright patch over the eyes was read as the muscle, the thing some people had trained.

Forty studies, two thousand people, and the patch says nothing about who is good at this.

It lights for anyone who's asked. Out here nobody asks. The boss reads your report aloud

to the whole room, and the work isn't done under the lights. It's on the stairs, coat half on,

thinking she reads everyone's that closely, and almost believing it.