Have you seen my voice?

Odd question, I know. Voice is associated with sound not sight. Still, I’ve been looking for it everywhere: writer’s retreats, a bedroom converted into a chic writing studio, the refrigerator, which is filled with brainpower snacks, specifically chocolate-mocha Haagen-Dazs (They say it cures writer’s block. I’ve dedicated years to working out the correct dosage). Yet while my words arranged on paper proved that I can hold my own with a comma and I’m no slouch when wielding a semicolon, the words themselves felt to me like hollow echo chambers; they ran in place bouncing off the keyboard onto the page but went nowhere.

Then one day last autumn, I was strolling through a street fair. I noticed two women standing behind a table display of seed packets wrapped attractively as gifts. Muse impulse or poor shopping-impulse control, it no longer matters which, prompted me to buy five of them.

So as not to feel guilty for spending $10. on seed packets that probably had a unit cost of eighty cents each, I went home and found the addresses of five people I’d fallen out of touch with for several years. For each note card, I thought that I’d be clever and enclose an inquiry: “Where will love blossom next in your life?”

Several weeks passed with no acknowledgement.

Naturally, I pulled out my journal to bask in rejection. I’d show them. I’d answer this query myself and rejoice in my own smug self-satisfaction that I was a lone word warrior.