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 Dinner out together, the background music is too loud. 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. Then I hear it, there between her vocal folds a little girl is weeping, a mother belittles and scolds. 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.