Threads of a Voice

I lost my voice once.
Not all at once.
It slipped away like shoreline—
bit by bit—
with every wave
that was louder than me.

Now when I speak,
my words feel like vapor.
Half-formed.
Like fog tracing the outline
of a body no one sees.

Some days,
I am made of sand.
Not quite solid.
Not quite vanishing.
But always shifting
under someone else’s weight.

And yet—
this quiet has a shape.
A name it hasn’t whispered yet.
I carry it,
not as a wound,
but as a seed.
Waiting for its season
to break open
and bloom.

Then—
someone sat beside the silence.
Didn’t try to fix it.
Didn’t pull me out.

They just sat.
Still.
Present.
Like they’d known this silence, too.
And said,
“I hear you—even here.”

And something shifted.
Not loud.
Not sudden.

Like the first light
brushing the edge
of a long, sleepless night.

They stayed.
Not above me, not ahead—
but beside.
And in their stillness,
I found reflection.
Not judgment.
Not noise.
Just… space.

And slowly—
my body, once sand,
began to settle.
Grain by grain.
Becoming earth.

Their belief became a mirror—
not one that warped me,
but one that whispered:
You are not invisible.
You are not too much,
and never not enough.
You are here—
and I see you.

And in that seeing,
my voice returned.

Not loud,
but rooted.
Not perfect,
but mine.

Now,
when I speak,
the world listens different.

Not ‘cause I shout—
but because I don’t shrink.
I don’t ask
for permission
to exist.

My words,
once buried in the noise,
now rise—
like wind through tall grass.
Soft.
But impossible to ignore.

People lean in.
They feel the steadiness
beneath the softness—
the storm I carried
without thunder.

My silence taught me
how to listen.
And now I speak
in a way
that makes others
feel heard.

The rooms I enter shift.
Walls soften.
Light stays longer.
Truth crawls out
of hiding.

I am no longer
disappearing.

I am a presence.
A pulse.
A place
others can rest beside.

And in offering
my voice—
I make space
for theirs.

A chorus rising,
from all the places
we were once
unseen