My Voice

"The wind ruined the birds' nest," my husband notes. "Look."

I abandon my laptop and walk up to our sunroom facing our backyard. Threads of God-knows-what (dried leaves?) mixed with spiderwebbery cotton puffs (moss?) fall down from the top of our glass door frame straight down to the wooden deck's floor.

"Don't dare open this door."

I won't.

"It's disgusting."

It is.

I roll my eyes at this mess while my heart sinks with sorrow and pity for these poor creatures. "They are talking," I spot two birds sunbathing at the shed's ceiling. Their house just collapsed and yet there they are, not a worry in the world. "Can you hear them?"

I bird-talk:

Where are we going to live now?

We have no house for Spring and Summer.

I don't know.

We are too chubby to fly up and down from that maple tree.

I'm aghast.

It's been seven years since writing became my side kick and I still feel like I'm tapping on this thing called voice (my guts sink, twist and flip when it comes paired with the word 'unique'. No joke.). Authors talk about their voices all the effing time, but honestly nobody can really grasp or explain what it truly is. But readers can feel it. Make no mistake.

Readers feel our voice every time they cry, laugh, startle, disgust, keep going, can't put it down, can't quit talking about it for days, weeks, months.

I too can feel my voice. Mature, crisp, straightforward, poetic, visceral, crazy, honest, brutal. My way.

I can feel how much I changed, improved, developed. I can feel the disconnect in early works. The urge to rewrite some of it comes to surface. But I don't. I won't. The window is closed.

There's always an open door though.

My currents. My work-in-progresses. All of us evolving together.

I feel my voices. Such and such are talking, but it doesn't make sense. Rethink, rework, craft. Bang.

I feel my voices. Such and such make me angry when arguing, make me laugh when snapping, make my stomach tremble when starring, warm my heart when kissing.

I voice my many voices across a single manuscript. This is quite unique.

Now it makes sense. Total sense. I make sense.

I close the door and leave no windows open when my many voices flow through and beyond.