The Erosion of Voices

You don't notice it happening— the voice dissolves in stages, first the laughter, how it caught on certain words, the specific architecture of delight.

Then the cadence goes, the particular rush of consonants, that breathless way they'd say your name when time was running out. You're left with the ghost of an accent, something you can't quite hold.

The rest persists in fragments: a phrase, a joke, the way they'd shift weight from one foot to the other while gathering their thoughts. Enough to recognize them in a crowd, not enough to hear them speak.

And finally, even the fragments flatten into something generic, could belong to anyone— and you understand at last that forgetting isn't losing the person. It's losing the particular way they existed only for you.