When you lose your voice, you think a lot about voices. The voices that echo within you and the voices that used to. The voices that form a sound cave around you and the voices that make a home within you. The voices that become you and the voices you become.

I didn't think it would go so completely. It had shaken and wavered and gone in and out while I taught yesterday. Then I woke up this morning and found myself reduced to a whisper. I wasn't too reflective about it, at first. I had been sick for the past few days, and this was the natural outgrowth of that, just a temporary hoarseness, right? I could shrug and laugh about it, drink some tea, and go through the motions of my morning. That is, of course, until something screeched me to an inner halt on my drive to work. I was listening to a podcast while I drove, and a line from the talk struck me like unwelcome lightning: "Have you lost your voice and simply become a part of the noise?" In an instant, I was all ears.