listening to my voice



if you listen
to the sound of my voice
you may soon
begin to think
that i must be alive
a real person

but that would be
a mistake

i am not there
not where you are
nor was i ever
among the living

a riddle
you wonder
this must be a riddle
but it is not

i simply acknowledge
the truth

i was told
long ago
that i had been born dead
the key phrase
i always thought
was that i had been born
after all

but life is more than birth
infants are still born
every day

one wonders
what it all means

my mother
being a young woman
was giving birth
to her first child
the second
was recorded
later on
as having died
soon after birth

and in mercy
i think
the doctor told her
i had survived
but i've since found
that not to be the case

i really died
as everyone knew
at the time
but did not revive
as was largely thought

lingering
and waiting
i hung around
all these generations
thinking and waiting

wondering when life
might come along
and take over
and make it all meaningful

silly me

now at the last
as i gaze backward
over the years
i finally understand
it simply
was never meant to be
i never lived at all

so here we are
at the edge
of another dark night
and you find it difficult
to believe
that my voice is not real
because you believe
you can hear it

yet i never breathed at all
and always i remained
forever silent
unable to utter
so much as a single cry

i never lived at all
you never saw me
i was never here
and you hear nothing now
but the shades of memory
of one who
simply
never was



©2006 Jim Sutton
all rights reserved.