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The Voice and the Ink
(Pdf can be found below.)
nce, in a quiet part of the world
where rivers ran
backwards
and the stars could be heard humming in the dark,
there
lived two souls
who loved each other
but often could not understand
one another.
One spoke in Voice,
strong and alive.
She could speak truths on the wind,
shape feeling with tone,
charm
birds down from trees
just by the way she laughed.
Her words danced like fireflies —
bright, quick,
full of life.
The other spoke in Ink.
His truths came slowly,
like spring water from stone.
He needed silence to gather them,
space to find the shape of what he truly
meant.
But when he wrote,
it was as if the page became a mirror
that showed
the soul itself —
honest, aching, luminous.
They loved each other
as best they could.
But when the days were heavy
or the heart was full,
their difference
became a wall.
“Speak to me!” said Voice.
“Say what you feel. Right here. Right now.”
“I’m trying,” said Ink,
“but I lose it when I speak.
My words run away
like startled deer.
If you’ll let me write —
just for a little —
I can give you something
truer.”
It wasn’t from fear.
He would have spoken fire if he could.
But for
him, words took time —
like stars forming slowly in the dark.
“That’s not real,” she said.
“Real is what’s spoken.”
And so the deeper truths remained unsaid.
The Voice felt abandoned.
The
Ink felt unseen.
And silence grew between them —
not the good kind.
One night, in despair,
Ink wandered into the forest,
asking no one in
particular:
“What do you do
when the way you can speak
is not the way you’re
allowed to?”
The wind answered.
Or maybe it was the firelight.
It said:
“Some are
born to speak aloud.
Some are born to speak in silence.
The true
miracle is not in the speaking.
The miracle is in the hearing.”
The next morning, Ink returned.
He handed her a story —
not
long,
but heavy with truth.
“This is not to replace our voices,” he said.
“Only to open the door to
them.”
She read it.
When she finished, her voice was quiet —
not angry, not
cold.
Just tired.
“I don’t know how to get through to you,” she said.
“I don’t, either,” he
said.
And that was all.
They sat together in the hush that followed —
not holding hands,
not
looking away,
just breathing in the stillness between them,
where
something was missing
and something was real.
Outside, the wind moved gently through the branches,
stirring nothing but
the fading leaves of autumn.
—William Zeitler
2025 June 29
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