Voice

It seems so long since I heard your voice in that easy, happy way,
when you came through the door or I picked up the phone,
so light, so pleased to see us again, so natural, so you;
but times have changed and it is so long since I have heard you.
I wonder why. What changed? How did you become other than
what we had known for so many years, through child, teenager,
and onto adult, and then, suddenly, as if the wind whistled and
you followed, it was all different. You were there but not there;
present in a physical sense, but not emotional; guarded in the
psychological; distant, so other and alien to the person we had
always known. I still wonder how that happened and if, one day,
or in one moment, the door will open and you will walk through,
or the phone will ring and I will pick it up and hear your voice in
that easy, happy way. I can't bear to think about the alternative.