CARRIE FOUNTAIN

The Voice

Outside Dublin, Texas the radio stationsdisappear and I’m left alone with the faintvoice of a call-in psychologist talkingto a man in Cleveland about the voiceof the self, the narratives that voicetells, how they can be sharp and wrongand cut to the bone—whose bone? I don’tknow. It’s hard for me to imagine beinghuman, even at this late a date, and it’simpossible to know with certainty thatwithin my own chest there pumps a heartthe size of my fist. The narrative of the manon the radio is foreign to me—he lost moneygoing into business with a friend and is angryand vengeful and resistant to the adviceof the nice psychologist. And yet hisvoice—the voice he speaks with—is sotender, so familiar. We’re here so briefly,the voice under his words says, and we seeso dimly, awful things haveto us, or will, we love our children morethan we are equipped to love anyone,would die or kill for them, and we loveour own people even after they hurt us,sometimes even more, and yet we failat loving our neighbor, our only trueweapon is empathy and we fail againand again to use it, and the one reasonwe must love this inadequate world isbecause we have no other choice, we haveno other place but this place, this earthand water where our ancestors once movedacross continents and oceans, conqueringor being conquered, so alive—so alivewith all their love and problems.