The Things We Keep by Accident
A woman moved apartments and found a grocery receipt tucked inside an old book.
On the back, in hurried handwriting, was a list of bird names.
She couldn’t remember the birds.
Couldn’t remember why she’d written them down.
Couldn’t remember anything about the species, their colors, their calls, or where they lived.
What she remembered was the man at the park bench.
The way he’d leaned forward when he talked.
How his face transformed when he realized someone was listening.
Everything outside that exchange went wonderfully irrelevant.
The names escaped first. Then the details.
Yet she couldn’t shake the unmistakable sense that she’d been invited into something important.
Maybe that’s how people work.
We think we’re leaving pieces of information behind.
Most of the time, we’re leaving pieces of ourselves.
And down the road, someone discovers them in a place neither of you expected and realizes they never forgot how it felt to matter to you for a moment.
— Autistic Ang
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I think one of the miracles of this life is when you find someone who talks to you like you're the only person in the world.