Borrowed Voices

Borrowed Voices

The spotlight found me

before I found my own voice.

Warm, blinding,

like it expected something of me.

The others around me

looked steadier,

freer,

like they had never questioned 

whether they belonged.

I did.

But I told myself to be brave.

And so, it began.

Words fell from their mouths

like they had always lived there,

fitting far too perfectly

to ever be questioned.

I waited for my cue

like it meant something.

But when it came,

there was nothing.

My name hung in the air

for a second too long,

a space where words should have lived.

I had prayed for nothing to go wrong,

and yet

they filled in

what I could never give.

I looked down at my script,

my lines erasing.

Panic drenched me

as I scrambled through the pages,

but the ink had already decided

I was unnecessary.

The audience didn't notice,

or maybe they did

and hid it well

behind their faces.

So I tried again.

I shaped my mouth

around borrowed sounds,

forced syllables into existence,

stitched together something

that almost resembled speech.

But it felt wrong,

like wearing a voice

that didn't fit,

too tight in places,

too loose in others.

And so, it slipped.

It always slipped.

And the play moved on.

Not one soul paused.

Not one rewrote the scene.

The story carried forward

so easily,

as if

I had never been a part of it

to begin with.

So, I stepped back,

and then off,

and then away from the light

that never really saw me.

Behind the curtains,

in the quiet of the greenroom,

there were no cues to miss,

no lines to forget.

I thought perhaps I should try again.

Maybe it was just the crowd.

I opened my mouth again,

only to hear something that wasn't mine.

It was softer

in the wrong places,

louder

where I never meant to be,

echoing voices

I had memorized

just to speak.

I started pacing,

searching for something familiar,

but between the pauses,

between the breaths,

all I found

were fragments

of everyone else.

I turned back toward the stage,

like I could outrun it.

But the spotlight found me

before I found my own voice.

Warm, blinding,

like it expected something of me.

And somewhere,

beneath rehearsed tones

and practiced replies,

there was a voice

I almost remembered

being mine.