Listen.
by Kathryn M. Barber
The sound of her voice weaves memories in layers across the ceiling of the nursery, our child’s name spelled out in blue-clouded letters on the wall behind them. The rocking chair creaks with my regrets, not hers; my groans, not hers; my sins. Not hers. Her daughter—our daughter—in her arms, murmurs gurgles that will one day morph into words I will never hear. She’s reading Dr. Seuss again, my wife, and the rhymes bob up and down like her sewing machine did when it woke me this morning. She was mending my pants hem.
Our baby, she ain’t but seven weeks old, but I can’t—I can’t hear the words in my own head anymore. My fingers, they can’t make chords no more. She was meant to be a mama, my wife, but me—me, I wasn’t meant to be no daddy. I was meant for one thing: the stage and the spotlights. Music. I don’t know how to be a daddy. I know music. That’s all. All I know.
Behind them on the ocean themed nursery wall: a painting my mama gave us, a ship in a stillness, silenced waves, the kind of silence that burns in your ears. I imagine us on the ship, husband and wife hand in hand, and I command the waves to rise, stand tall and loud. The kind of loudness that reminds me I’m still alive. Lightning fills the sky as I beckon it, and I picture the boat’s main filling with water, our ankles wet with the sea.
We have to jump, I yell, my words dodging the raindrops to find her ears.
No, she says, and her dress grows heavy with the saltwater, her face to the rain, to the sun that abandoned her, as though she believes her closed eyes can change the sky back to the silence I took from her. She was always stronger than me. Always, always. Wait, she says. Wait. The storm, it’ll stop, and then it’ll be just me and you. Me and you and the baby.
And so I stand still, I step out of that painting, and I close my eyes, memorize and recite in my head the nursery rhyme she repeats to the sleeping wad of blankets and new flesh. I listen to the lines like I listen to the rain, listen to her words become hums like the hurricane fades slowly into a sun shower.
But I can’t. I wasn’t meant to live in a house that stands still in the suburbs: I was meant for a bus on wheels, carries me across states while my hands carry songs across metal strings. That’s it. That’s all. All I know.
Guitar in my right hand, wedding ring clenched in my left, I lay the band of gold on the hall table. I press my lips to the metal before it rests on the wooden table, the wood her grandfather nailed together. As the arrangement of wood and strings in the case weighs down my arm, I consider our own irony: what she loved’s what made me go.
All her life, she dreamed of skyscrapers, big lights, city noise. But when she finally made it, she found that the tallest building didn’t stand against the waves of Carolina. The bright lights couldn’t outshine the stars above the water. The city noise was drowned out by the sound of the sea calling her name—and so she followed it, went back home. And me, I followed her.
But now I hear melodies in the waves, and songs in the stars, and the busy noise of Broadway and a hundred instruments. I hear the whisper of the stage calling me home in the murmurs of our child asleep in her arms. And so, like her, like she followed the waves that boarded our sinking ship, I will follow the rhymes in the pavement that change the Carolina sand into Tennessee mud—
—I am leaving.
The harmonies have abandoned me, and the chords have fled. I have to find them. I have to. I sing under my breath. Me. I am not enough. We are not enough. This child—is not enough.
This music is not enough.
And then, and then: her words become something more, transform from child’s poetry with meter to deep, but soft—elegant—song.
She—she, who watched me from a stage; she—she who suggested synonyms from the kitchen as I scribbled onto pads in the living room. My ears strain as I drown in her, in the water filling our boat, in the frayed hums that have become note progression—and how come in all our years, I ain’t never heard her sing like that?
I climb back inside the painting, I climb inside her voice, want to nestle down and live in her throat, in that scratching dripping out from her. The water in the boat remains stagnant. Unmoving. I let it soak me, drench me, and I think, if the last thing I ever hear is the sound coming out of her—
I open my guitar case. My naked ring finger holds the E position, my opposite hand strums, and I follow her voice with my hands.
Me—my song was not enough.
Hers is.
You—
yours
is.
(inspired by Cam’s “Mayday”)
The sound of her voice weaves memories in layers across the ceiling of the nursery, our child’s name spelled out in blue-clouded letters on the wall behind them. The rocking chair creaks with my regrets, not hers; my groans, not hers; my sins. Not hers. Her daughter—our daughter—in her arms, murmurs gurgles that will one day morph into words I will never hear. She’s reading Dr. Seuss again, my wife, and the rhymes bob up and down like her sewing machine did when it woke me this morning. She was mending my pants hem.
Our baby, she ain’t but seven weeks old, but I can’t—I can’t hear the words in my own head anymore. My fingers, they can’t make chords no more. She was meant to be a mama, my wife, but me—me, I wasn’t meant to be no daddy. I was meant for one thing: the stage and the spotlights. Music. I don’t know how to be a daddy. I know music. That’s all. All I know.
Behind them on the ocean themed nursery wall: a painting my mama gave us, a ship in a stillness, silenced waves, the kind of silence that burns in your ears. I imagine us on the ship, husband and wife hand in hand, and I command the waves to rise, stand tall and loud. The kind of loudness that reminds me I’m still alive. Lightning fills the sky as I beckon it, and I picture the boat’s main filling with water, our ankles wet with the sea.
We have to jump, I yell, my words dodging the raindrops to find her ears.
No, she says, and her dress grows heavy with the saltwater, her face to the rain, to the sun that abandoned her, as though she believes her closed eyes can change the sky back to the silence I took from her. She was always stronger than me. Always, always. Wait, she says. Wait. The storm, it’ll stop, and then it’ll be just me and you. Me and you and the baby.
And so I stand still, I step out of that painting, and I close my eyes, memorize and recite in my head the nursery rhyme she repeats to the sleeping wad of blankets and new flesh. I listen to the lines like I listen to the rain, listen to her words become hums like the hurricane fades slowly into a sun shower.
But I can’t. I wasn’t meant to live in a house that stands still in the suburbs: I was meant for a bus on wheels, carries me across states while my hands carry songs across metal strings. That’s it. That’s all. All I know.
Guitar in my right hand, wedding ring clenched in my left, I lay the band of gold on the hall table. I press my lips to the metal before it rests on the wooden table, the wood her grandfather nailed together. As the arrangement of wood and strings in the case weighs down my arm, I consider our own irony: what she loved’s what made me go.
All her life, she dreamed of skyscrapers, big lights, city noise. But when she finally made it, she found that the tallest building didn’t stand against the waves of Carolina. The bright lights couldn’t outshine the stars above the water. The city noise was drowned out by the sound of the sea calling her name—and so she followed it, went back home. And me, I followed her.
But now I hear melodies in the waves, and songs in the stars, and the busy noise of Broadway and a hundred instruments. I hear the whisper of the stage calling me home in the murmurs of our child asleep in her arms. And so, like her, like she followed the waves that boarded our sinking ship, I will follow the rhymes in the pavement that change the Carolina sand into Tennessee mud—
—I am leaving.
The harmonies have abandoned me, and the chords have fled. I have to find them. I have to. I sing under my breath. Me. I am not enough. We are not enough. This child—is not enough.
This music is not enough.
And then, and then: her words become something more, transform from child’s poetry with meter to deep, but soft—elegant—song.
She—she, who watched me from a stage; she—she who suggested synonyms from the kitchen as I scribbled onto pads in the living room. My ears strain as I drown in her, in the water filling our boat, in the frayed hums that have become note progression—and how come in all our years, I ain’t never heard her sing like that?
I climb back inside the painting, I climb inside her voice, want to nestle down and live in her throat, in that scratching dripping out from her. The water in the boat remains stagnant. Unmoving. I let it soak me, drench me, and I think, if the last thing I ever hear is the sound coming out of her—
I open my guitar case. My naked ring finger holds the E position, my opposite hand strums, and I follow her voice with my hands.
Me—my song was not enough.
Hers is.
You—
yours
is.
(inspired by Cam’s “Mayday”)