Talking birds with you on one of our walks
I neglected to hit stop on my Merlin app,
resulting in a 5 minute, 26 second accidental audio recording
          of us.
Discovering this a month later
(cringing at my covertly recorded voice prattling on about my cats),
I nearly hit delete
but was bemused by the novelty
of this unintended artifact
and let it play.
We talked birds and cats, dogs and skunks, cornhole/pool/darts,
laughed about now defunct online dating profiles,
offering up these simple stories like gifts;
          there is so much still
          to know about one another.
I’ve been collecting photos of us:
noticing when the light is just right,
when we look particularly cute,
deleting the ones I don’t like
and redoing
          until they document the moment
          in precisely the way I envisioned.
The rawness of this recording, with none of that pageantry, prescription, pre-meditation
was like a salve.
Our laughs easy as air
our back and forth like a dance
it was all so
          real.
The recording even picked up that passerby’s remark – the man who said that he loved that we were holding hands
(you thought this was an odd thing to say to strangers; I thought it was sweet).
Five minutes and twenty-six seconds of us
a red-winged blackbird
a staggering sunset
another charmed day in this life
that we can never truly
capture as our own.
 
6/13/26