The summer I learned to save a document

Was the summer the fox den became a PDF.

*Click.* A permanence of pixels. A den of light.

I’d press my ear to the computer’s exhaust fan—

a new kind of wind in a new kind of pines.

My name, a username, blooming in the login field.

I saved the smell of rain on hot asphalt as

*“last_revision_forgiveness(3).wav”*

(Verse )

And you, in the next room, folding a paper crane

from a grocery list. The rustle was a percussion.

A glitched kingfisher, trapped in the router, sang

*error-error-error-a-gleam.*

We were building a forest from what the wires forgot.

Your laughter, a cassette tape chewed and spliced back,

missing the crucial seconds. I collect the gaps.

I am archiving the quiet between your teeth.

(Bridge)

They say the world is ending. Maybe.

The server farm hums a lullaby to the tulip bulb.

A moth, dusted in screen-light, traces the code

for *moonlight* on the pane.

We are both ghost and fossil in the same instant.

A nostalgia for a present that is already

buffering.

Let the system fail

in beautiful ways.

Let the blue screen bloom

into morning glory.

Let my corrupted heart

be a saved draft

titled *tenderness.zip*.

Open me.

Open me.

I am all

and

I am

undo.