Bits of Voices

I would never let on the dramatic and unexpected impact that was felt in the invisible infiltration of the simple sound of her voice.

Arriving in my ears like a new color, a new taste.

There is a trace, a linear linkage like a long black wire that traces itself back to the parts of Virginia from where she came...places near Scotland and Surry...Carsley.  Small and in-between places where shoals and shallows were covered by the salted sea, and then baked under summer heat.  Her voice was the color of bourbon, smoother still, and her laugh was the release of endorphins in my mind.  Spiking, chaotic, warming...relieving.

It was so occasional.  So fairly rare.  The reason I kept voicemails to remind me, the way you keep the cork of some fair wine to attempt to glance and whiff the scent again...and again.

But the recorded voice was nowhere near the live one...the slight changes in attenuation.  Sometimes tired, sometimes annoyed.  Sometimes just curious.

But the clawing back of her voice inside my mind was enduring...I need only hear it once to feel like it is sparkling new...but remembered.

It arrives at my doorstep.

I have heard it in daylight, heard it in rain.  Heard it whispered to me, heard it through tears.

I have heard it all.

But mostly...now...just hearing it at all is enough...even if merely to tell me the time, or tell me the weather.