A cassette labeled "summer, do not tape over"

Bin of loose cassettes, twenty-five cents each, most of them labeled in the hand of whoever owned them. Mixes, mostly. One said only "summer" on the spine, and on the card, in smaller writing: do not tape over.

I paid the quarter. It felt like the least I could do.

What is on it

Side A is a porch. You can hear a screen door, a box fan, a radio somewhere inside playing a ballgame, and two people who are not talking about anything in particular. At about minute nine one of them says, "Are you recording this?" and the other says, "Somebody should."

Side B starts with a song, somebody playing a guitar badly and singing it well, and then it goes back to the porch. The light changes, I think. The box fan gets turned off. The ballgame ends. Someone wins.

Why I kept it

It is not mine, and it is not for me, and I have played it three times. I know it is a strange thing to do with someone else's summer. But they asked it not to be taped over, and the best way I know to honor that is to keep listening to it.

— w.