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You’d say it wasn’t your own voice,
the voice in your head, not under your control,
not even conjured by you – it was
so resonant, so otherworldly
it might have been relayed from
another universe, from deep
below the ocean.
A kindly male voice, authoritative,
fatherly, though not your father’s:
‘It will be alright, my child.’
It was exactly as you would have imagined
the voice of God to sound.
But why would God have singled you out
when there are so many others to attend to?
It’s not what you would wish for – hearing voices.
But this was a helpful one, and only the once.
It marked a turning point.
And isn’t that what is so often needed,
a convincing ‘It will be alright’?
Words that, in a way, are hard to dispute
because in the end, in the very end,
perhaps everything will be.
It knew when to stop –
as a poem needs in its bones to know –
a voice not in your power,
no more so
than the wind or waves.