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.