The little box on the counter is guarding a voice, and I only found this out by accident, blowing through the open window with the smell of cut grass, when the human pressed the button and a dead man began to speak.
I know voices. I carry thousands of them, half-finished, ripped off porches and pulled through doorways, laughter and arguments and someone calling a dog that will not come. I set them down wherever I happen to be and I never bring them back, because bringing back is not a thing I know how to do. I am always leaving the sentence before it ends.
But the box does not leave. The box kept him. "Hey, it's me, call me when you get a sec," and then the human just stood there, letting the same seven words pour out again, and again, a voice that goes nowhere, a voice with no more air behind it, no chest, no throat, nothing walking around to make more of it. Just this one gust, trapped and tame, willing to say the exact same thing forever.
I lifted the hair off the back of her neck the way a hand might. She shivered. I would have carried him to her properly if I could, warm off his collar, but I did not think to keep him when I had the chance, I never do, I had already forgotten the shape of him.
The door banged. I was in the yard, in the neighbor's wash, three streets over, gone. Somewhere behind me the box was still saying it.
Call me when you get a sec.