I have a soft voice. I wouldn’t say it’s soothing, smooth, or even gentle, but it isn’t jagged in the corners like an old cinder block. It’s easy to listen to. Easy to carry.

Sometimes though, usually when small children have smashed my very last stretch of sanity, my voice changes.

It hits a pitch– a grit, an emptiness– that I can’t stand.

“Listen,” I say, “Listen to how my voice sounds. No one wants it to sound like this. Least of all me.”

Kids get this. They look up at me– made of eyes and stomachs and suspected immortality– and they settle themselves down.

Literally no one wants to hear my voice when it gets like that. Not even a hyper seven-year-old.

Lately, I have some heavy thoughts about the intersection of self-isolation, disability communities, and incarceration. But whenever I start writing, I can’t help but think:

“Listen. Listen to how my voice sounds. No one wants it to sound like this, least of all me.”

It’s hard not to be shrill. It’s hard not to sound like a glass of wine when a wet finger is molded against its edges. I’m sure, as I continue to be emptied, there will be many new notes, but they will all vibrate like heavy footsteps pretending to be a heartbeat forgetting that it is a scream.

In my perfect world, Rarasaur blog is a dinner table full of food, a place of nourishment. If there is wine here at all, it is for the celebrating, not the aching, not the barding of aches. Here, I want to talk about the harvest. I want to say soft-voiced grace and have it reach the furthest chair. I want to lean forward, elbows on the table, and just, look at you.

Just look at you.

You’re so beautiful.

When I’m ready to leave, I want to be full.

I have a soft voice, but I have had a hard life, full of sharp turns. I have a soft heart, and a soft rose-colored vision to guide me, and many soft arms to fall into whenever I feel tired.

I have a light voice but sometimes it carries very heavy messages, and the edges of those stories seem like they might rip through. Like cinderblocks in a pillowcase. I don’t know if they’ll tear me up or just crumble into dust, but every so often, I remember that whenever I say — Listen, Listen to my voice— somebody is.

Somebody always is, even when my voice isn’t easy on our hearts or our ears.

I don’t know what to do with a gift like that, so I come back here. Sit down, full, at the empty table.

Think of something to write, something to give back.

What is the grace you give for a table that has filled you up so many times you can never go hungry?

Ah yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.