Voices

In between snatches of lines from authors he admired, he tried finding his voice. Was he mute? The years seemed to affirm. But every once in a while there was a gush of words that would come to him, ideas that he would want to immediately put in words, mornings when words floated all around… there were those days. He trusted that there was a voice, only that it made itself heard less often. It lacked a confidence to produce itself in a world that intimidated with its very fine voices. 

Day after the day, as the seasons changed, the feeble voice began tracing the edges of silence that fell in his room, when he was not reading any of the famous authors. That it took years for the voice to register even those faint notes, made him think of the formative experiences that made the writers he knew. Early life, many suggested, has shaped them. In his vulnerable moments, he thought, what was his early life about? Is there a conscious memory of any of those years? In that moment, the voice strengthened.