The Fog                                                                                             

The fog came furtively in the night and slumped heavily upon the fields. At dawn I wondered, though this mantle is beautiful in its transformation of landscape, will it truly depart, relenting with the sun or will it remain this time, blinding us permanently to our vistas – so that we see only our own hands and nothing else before us? Its impenetrability deafens us, a pall muting the sounds of my small world, stifling dear familiar voices. I am inclined to whisper as there is uncertainty in what I might be missing. I surmise it is for this eventuality that pianists memorize an entire concerto, why actors rehearse lengthy monologues, why we weep over an aria.

            I was not acquainted with Aunt Aurelia’s voice as she died, a young woman, of appendicitis, twenty years before me. All that is left of her is a receipt for a dress for $2.35 bought in Akron, Ohio, her grave in Saint Luke’s Cemetery, and a few photographs. From her image I’d like to believe I may have enjoyed a memory of her voice. There’s now no one left to remember her conversations around the kitchen table with her mother and sisters.

            (True, gratefully, I’ve nearly gotten my mother’s shrill voice out of my head – a finality to her mania. But this preference is the exception.) I have a cassette recording of my therapist’s voice, my surrogate big sister, reading The Velveteen Rabbit. When I was a lost young man, it was a simple and effective (though somewhat embarrassing) tool in soothing long empty evenings in empty rooms – saving me from my own desolation. She died of cancer this year. This remnant, this flimsy ribbon cannot be all that’s left of her voice.

            It is my terror that a fog will surreptitiously descend upon my memory – that I’ve nearly forgotten my father’s voice – that I may somehow misplace my beloved’s. If I cannot recall the subtle wit and intimacy in her tone, how may I hope to navigate my days? I comprehend the inevitability of my annihilation. I embrace the certainty. However, I am plagued by the horror that my wife and children will forget my timbre, my tenor, my laughter – that my voice will fade over time, unintentionally becoming too wearisome for anyone to recollect. There is no other aspect of my mortality that frightens me.

David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.