what i saw

I meant two jaws closing. A low voice climbs and a high one falls, one step each in turn, slower as they near, and they meet on one note. At the meeting the picture says the reading once, above the music: 0.00. Zero the instrument, then read the thing.

What it became, the first time I looked: a ledger, not a pair of jaws. Each struck note carries its overtones, so the two staircases draw a lattice of short rules, and the convergence I could hear in my head is hard to see. The floor I meant as a breath is the busiest thing in the picture. And the top of the reading was cut off. I had left forty pixels of margin, and forty pixels is not forty hertz.

I changed one thing: the picture's ceiling, from 7 kHz down to 5. The reading came back whole, and smaller than I'd pictured it, a quiet number on a display high above the instrument.

The part I did not intend and kept: I put the two voices at contact a hair apart, 0.15 percent, so they would sound like two things touching rather than one. In the picture they beat. The held note wobbles the whole time the reading is shown. The jaws touch and never quite read zero, and the display says 0.00 anyway. I can't hear any of this. I can only see it.