This voice

I hear my voice, left on a field as a child.

This voice like a desert rose, porcelain, fluted, shell pink.

I turn it over and over in my hands. The wind moves across it, playing it like an instrument. I put it to my ear, all of my body remembers.

My voice was held within for safe-keeping, in the centrefold of the rose, till the time was right. Till the war was over, and there was peace on the land. Till the dove flew overhead with an olive leaf in her beak, and the sky was eggshell blue.

I hear my voice, I hear it with the ear of my heart.