Throat Voices

I want to run her thoughts through a carwash, they are not dirty, just old, the way a classic corvette needs a rinse occasionally, but never a re-paint Not that I think of her as a car, more an abandoned engine that had been laid too long in a barn. farm mice had learned to turn her ignition without the need for any fresh oil. Dinner together in a Texas Roadhouse. The nasal song of a country boy trapped in a ball-breaking melody. I can’t hear her words, she can’t hear mine…finally we’re communicating. An owl in a hollow tree can hear the whole dark forest. I imagine I am roosting in her throat, listening, not to her mind or mine, but Brailing my way around her silence. The streaks are good, throats become naked as the food alone speaks to us. Then here between her vocal folds a little girl is weeping. There in the craw-dark, a mother belittles and scolds. An inner voice far from this moment speaks: “My ears are too big. I will never be smart enough, witty enough, thin enough, worthy of love.” A broken echo intones. It is a recording. The recounting has no motor, no apparatus, just etched grooves scored into an ethereal larynx. The server comes around. “How you’ll doing.” She and the waitress look to me, but I am still in the hollow of her throat a space now witnessing my own doleful litany of sad songs.