What if I…

What if I say nothing ever again? Wouldn’t it feel good? What if I only spoke what my heart really wanted to share? Would I be happier? Or would I start turning each word around mumbling to myself, “Are we there yet, are we authentic?”

This word came not from the heart, its completely meaningless but not in a good stimmy way. Rather it is too full of meaning, trying to make sense yet each word is hollow and so heavy while also so flimsy that they dissipate and creep away into nothingness before their meaning has time to fully emerge.

What if I did not care? What if it did not matter? What if he said, she said, they said, we said, I say, what a nice tie you are wearing. It reminds me of the one my brother wore to his wedding.

What if I said it in a high squeaky voice or a low mumbling voice or maybe the dead voice that bothered my friend David mother so much when I was nineteen?

“David, it’s that girl with the dead voice for you,” she would shout after answering the phone.

What, but what does she mean? Dead voice. I cannot hear my own voice.

My sister has a lovely voice, especially when she is chanting the heart sutras. Our voices are very alike but hers has more tone and can cut me in a thousand ways.

And suddenly I am back in the choir. Rows of brown school jerseys surround me. I am singing straight from the heart, so proud to have been chosen. Suddenly the teacher calls out, “Stop, someone is off-key.” It’s not me, I know, cause I was chosen. We start singing again and she walks from child to child, listening. When she comes to me, she says, “It’s you”.

I am allowed to stay in the choir but have to lip-sync for the rest of the year. Bodies expand and contract in song all around me but mine is still.