Last week a crazed, awful, dervished blur.

One day spinning into the next, too fast for me to keep up, strange circumstances spinning painfully out of control, that unexpected moment of undiluted sweetness in the dark but it happened so fast and I was spun so hard that now I wonder if I made it up, Friday spinning into unrepentant dissolution spinning into Saturday's dance floor: twirling dancers, art students gyrating their bright costumes like a scattering of leaves, searing flare of fiddle making me flicker all night long like a flame growing reckless on the wick.

I wake up the next day and find that I've lost my voice.

I walk and walk and walk, and try to find my words again, try to think of something/anything to say, but the cold green rush of the river's current erases all my language, birds have hijacked my song and are holding it hostage for their own nefarious purposes like Patty Hearst, and even if I could find my voice, my breath's been taken away by the same negligent spring wind that tangles my hair into a dark intricate knotwork.

At the end of the day, I'm too exhausted to do more than steep myself into a spent teabag in the bath. There, I dream of fish singing silvered scales, a pure a capella solfege, in the dark. I dream of jellyfish with their ribboned streamers, luminescing like a cascade of moons, or party lanterns. I dream I can swim all night underwater.

My skin pinkens, and steam's elusive cursive writes to you in the air like my emanuensis.

Such lovely words ... I hope you find your voice soon.

Do you remember Ruth in The Bonesetter's Daughter loses her voice for one week in spring (?) every year? I think she comes to think of it as a vacation from speaking. And let us know if you end up writing more.

un abrazo,

catriona

In sleep, the voice can reach the truest depths of dreaming.

Thank you, Ivy!

And ktrion, I'd forgotten about Ruth in The Bonesetter's Daugher. Yes. Yes, I like that.

Lenka, Lenka, Lenka . . .