Don’t Text Me: I Just Want To Hear Your Voice

I don’t want the bareness of words flashing at me. I don’t want the vacant emoticons and those symbols I still don’t understand. I don’t want to decipher the unsaid dialogue of texts. I don’t want all that ambiguity. 

I just want to hear your voice.

My fingers cannot share like my voice. My fingers cannot type fast enough, but my tongue can run and spin tale after tale. Let me articulate, let me enunciate, let me tell you. Why read the gibberish of abbreviations, why ponder over unspoken intentions? Why not just relax and listen? Listen to voice, listen to the construction of sounds, the formation of words, the placements of diction. Listen to the entanglement that is this story. Listen to the power of the spoken. 

But the spoken has become a lost art, a pastime even. We are the culture of instantaneous gratification and continuous excuses of busy lives. We have rendered the ease of texting as our primary means of communication when, in fact, the intent is supplementary. I can understand texting subtle updates throughout the day, but not lengthy tales or stories. Because if you’re willing to take all the effort to text me that many sentences, I see no reason why you can’t, simply, call me.

Not maybe, but definitely. I want the certainty of my phone ringing, that anticipation of another human voice. I want the urgency of finding my phone and hastily saying hello. I want to hear the rhythmic flow of your voice, the ups and downs of tone, the excitement of a story. I want the reciprocal spoken dialogue, the bantering of two people late at night. Words, words, words will flow and cease to the silence of our breathing. I want to hear the stillness of the night, the subtle inhales and exhales of our lungs. I want to fall asleep to this lullaby and then wake up and do it all again.