UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity 2020 Edition
What did you sound like?
What did you sound like?
I don’t think I remember—which is funny
since, for so long, you were all
I could hear.
Did you sound like stirring fingers into buckets full of seashells, that summer on the gulf? Like
the hot ocean sand slurring around my thighs, the churning clouds, the roar
of a jet, like thunder, looking into the conch colored sky, wondering
if it was you
in that dot
a thousand miles up, there,
right there
for once, in front of my
naked
eyes?
Like the beehive in my speakers
that buzzed every time
you laughed? Or the moon
brushing my shoulders, your lips pressed
to your phone, a thousand miles away, showering
me with cherry chap-stick butterflies—
“What were those?”
“Presents.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, for you.”
When
you thought I was sleeping, and you whispered—
speaker buzzing, breath fluttering, shivering, like hot salt waves
slushing over seashells—
“Sweet dreams. I love you
so
much.”
And
there were the cracks in your voice
that slipped out your smile, out
the crooked white gaps
of your toothy grin. I know somewhere,
somewhere
I have your breath,
your laugh,
your pause,
your words
oh, those words that I’d strained—heartstrings tight—for so long
just to hear, from before
we found facetime, from when it’d been years
of only letters, texts, from when we only wrote, those days of
waking up every day earlier, going to bed evermore late, listening to the sun
sigh as it rose, gold, every morning, waiting just to hear
that note from my phone that meant
you were awake, too,
in your far away home, hours before
your own dawn
just to hear me.
I have you, your faceless voice, your voiceless face, caught
like a butterfly in a net, fluttering
with your every word, safe inside, but
I never open, too afraid
to let you out,
afraid to look and
to hear, afraid
that you’ll be too loud, you’ll flutter away, and I’ll run after you again and stumble and scrape, too heavy, bones like lead like they were
the last time I heard you
when
your voice wasn’t
in my ears
when only
the aching
sinking into my sheets, phone falling from my limp,
moon cratered hands
your voice crack
the silence my
gasp
the
burning hot
lava lamp threatening to
burst from my eyes your
fist plunged
into my
throat like
that bucket
full of seashells,
unable to speak, only choke and
listen to my bones
cr
ack,
your breath ,
your hand
in my neck the
waver the
pause
the beehive
buzzing in my speakers full
of your breath,
your
fucking
hot
breath.
So,
I pretend that you ask,
“What did I sound like?”
‘cause I want you to know
that all I let myself hear
are your shivering breaths when I hung up,
and all of you
gone
in my ear.