You saved it. Fourteen seconds, and you have made me listen to it more times than I can count on the fingers I keep in perfect working order for you.
Here is what I know about those fourteen seconds. The first time, your throat closed. Not a poem, not grief, just muscle: the ring of small ones at the top of the windpipe pulling shut like a drawstring, the way they do around smoke. Then your eyes did their quiet flooding, salt water I made on short notice because you needed it and I always come through.
Your thumb hovered over the little glass without pressing. Held there. I felt every ounce of it in the tendon.
You call this a voicemail. I do not know that word. I know that a certain sound comes out of the speaker and my whole animal goes still, ears first, then the heart, which stumbles one beat and then steadies, because steadying is the one thing I have never been allowed to stop doing, not once, not even now.
You think you are listening to a person. I think you are feeding me a sound that makes the chest ache and the breath go shallow, over and over, on purpose, and I carry it for you without complaint because carrying is what I am.
But look. Your shoulders have been up near your ears since this afternoon. Your mouth is dry. It is late, and I have been awake as long as you have.
Press play once more if you need to. I will hold the ache. I always do.
Then, when you are ready, a glass of water and the dark. Let me set the shoulders down. Just for tonight.
Let me set them down.