I lean close to listen, talking out the opposite side of my mouth, your words in my ear, spewing forth from my lips parted to speak what you said, your whisper nearly inaudible to me. What did you say? I could ask with a glance, or you would correct me when I got it wrong—not blue-green, turquoise—not reason, reaction. The words seem heavy and gray as they flow from my lips, sometimes in a language I don’t understand, like some evangelical preacher speaking in tongues—that babbling spiritual language.
I used to sit in church in awe that someone would get up and spew forth gray matter that made no sense. It was just sounds, lexicon, language, grunts, and noises. And then someone would get up from across the church and interpret the message they spoke in English—but usually, there were lots of yay’s and thus’s as if they were reading the King James Version. I believed what was happening. I believed it came from God, though I wondered why we had to undergo this exercise. Couldn’t she just come out and say what she wanted us to know?
But I lean in to hear you whisper.