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Your Voice by Megan Brevig

Your Voice
by Megan Brevig from Lincoln High School
Published in the 2007-2008 WITS Anthology I Once Was Young and Strong

It’s the late night conversations,
When your voice is coming through the phone
That you sound soft, and dull, and tired.
Often lapsing into desolate silences
Shared only by those who have trapped the noise within their mouths
You sound like waves hitting lazily on the shore
Rocks tumbling over each other
As you step down harshly upon their backs
Crickets chirping for lack of sound in the night
A forgotten mountain ridge
Standing on top of the world
With the wind driving messily through your hair.
Because it’s blowing north.
And you’re in its way.

The stillness is shattered abruptly
With a jolt from your tea
And up through your bloodstream
Until you’re off with the vitality of a racehorse
Giving leave to a hundred tiny birds
To open their lungs in time to fill the morning with their cries
And a million strange beasts follow,
And then guffaw at the meaningless drivel tumbling at me
Heading towards the nonsensical yip of a zebra
Lowing itself in the growl of the tiger
You once wanted to be

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