How Do I Find My Voice

I lost my voice after screaming out the window, to the snow outside. My snow-woman melted and I cried. My tears, sharp daggers streaming down my face. Her puddle, what was left of her, surrounded my feet. My toes started to get so cold and shivers went up my body and the hairs on my arm stood up like little needles. That reminds me, I should really make an appointment with my acupuncturist.

I digress.

She was my spitting image: round button eyes--black as crow's feathers; carrot nose--jutting out yet slightly bent at the end--I always hated how crooked my nosed was and often thought to myself, especially when day dreaming or alone or when I was cooking, I often played with the idea of one day getting a nose job; and her smirk made out of twigs that went one after another until an upturned mouth formed--but too bad I never ever smiled. Maybe that was the only feature we weren't alike on.

But alas she is no more. Just wetness slowly spreading and stopping at my feet. That's when I went inside. I didn't want to see her anymore. Her death, her life no longer, no longer so dependent on the weather. How fickle she was, wasn't she? Abandoning me like this.

Maybe I should call my mother? She is always worrying about me, if I'll find a life partner, if I'll find someone to take care of me. When she says that I always reply back, "But I'm fully capable of taking care of myself," and then I always take a deep breath after that and let the conversation come to a natural twist and turn and then we talk until we've said everything that happened that day. It's effort to try and counter your mother, the matriarch of the family, especially once dad died. None of us kids ever wanted her to feel uncomfortable. Always calling her asking, "How's your day going?"

None of us talk about him anymore, none of us talk about my dad.

The man, when I was a baby, used to put me on his stomach and let me sleep that way. Or the man that I would rush to hug him each day when he came home from work, I would leap over to him, hug him, and be so happy to see him. Or the man when I once went down to the TV room to give him a bowl of fresh watermelon, but tripped right before giving it to him, and the watermelon and all its juices landed in his lap. He laughed at the hilarity of it, comforting me in the hearty laughter, though I felt so embarrassed at having done that mistake.

I bite my lip. Say no more, think no more, remember no more. It hurts too much.