My favorite sound is the sound of your voice. When you talk to me, yes, but also when your attention is turned elsewhere. Your voice is particularly beautiful when you’re telling someone a story. When I’m not expected to eventually answer, I can listen to you in a completely different way, get lost in the peaks and valleys of your prosody.
I love when you’re talking to someone else, and you laugh. Ah, that laugh. I get so caught up in it that the world could end, and I probably wouldn’t notice. I’d just get swept away in that laugh until there was nothing else.
That’s been the one big upside now that you’re working from home so much. Hearing you laugh in whatever work meeting you have. You’re wearing headphones so I can’t hear the other voices. But I certainly hear you — every time I emerge from my office after an extended writing session. One in which I’m usually forcing my attention towards something else. Something that needs to be communicated — to be described — for practical reasons.
I will hear you, and every part of me will light up in selfish reward. You who command me so effortlessly. You are what I trend towards without trying to. I feel like I’m forever drifting towards you, to getting closer to you, in a way that’s primal, supernatural.
There are other sounds to you, too. Ones that I’ve come to love. The sound of your footsteps as you walk around our place, at a rhythm particular to you. The exact timing you use when you start the shower — how you rise, turn on the water, switch it into shower mode.
I’m even fond of the way you blow your nose. Yes, really.
Anyway, I’m in love with the sound of you. Yes, your voice, but also every other sound you make.
And that’s why it’s so quiet whenever you go away.
You’re beautiful to look at, it’s true. But you’re just as beautiful to listen to.