hello?

I love the sound of his voice. No matter what he's telling me, whether he's angry because I'm being a brat or ecstatic because his team won, it is a sound that envelopes me like a white fleece blanket on a cool night. I have six of his voicemails saved on my phone. One of them is from last Christmas. I have one where his sound is crisp through a landline but most are digitally mutilated versions of him bounced up through smog and stars to satellites and then back again to my hand. There is no conch shell that can bring the ocean to my ear like his voice. He sings snippets of songs with lyrics he makes up himself. He calls out when he's in the kitchen even though knows not to disrupt my highly methodical cooking madness, he always thinks of something that maybe I'll let him help with. His voice is the compass that points me to his heart and I listen for every tick.