Nine of Hearts

© Elise Grinstead 2011

I am immersed in a sphere, a world full of words…spoken; written; left unsaid; narratives; statements; of the body; and more. My days are filled with reading of the typeset, the curvature of lips, language natively foreign, visual. My nights—chronicles play of things both said and unsaid, actions done or yet to be. Always, the ticker clack of brain synapses like typewriter keys are active all around me.

I read these voices ever still. The voices of spoken and written words of co-workers, husband, family, friends, community, strangers in this city. Yes, I read these voices ever still. The voices of a relaxed or tight face, a bounce in step or a slumping down, a turning away or a turning towards. I read these voices ever still. The voices of authors famous and unrealized, access easily granted into the lives and minds of others. I see and I hear in greater measure than I have remembered before.

And in spite of these ears that do not hear much, my world is sizzling live. So much so lately, that I am past the point of being coherently aware. All of these distinct hues of words have been mixed together to where they are past recognition of their initial state, and they now muddily display. It’s all just so much. In an effort to make a distinction again, I go to another source of language, a purer hue than what I left behind. That too, eventually gets pushed into the rest into its eventual muddled state, and somehow I am right back where I started while also being further in than I ever have been before.

I have lost the memory of my own voice. A temporary self-amnesia seems to have set in, in which I remember what I see and hear around me, but I do not remember myself. I do not recognize the sound of my words. And in the effort to find it, I try out many, waiting for one to resonate and click and fall into place, as if it were there all along and I did not know it. In the frustration of the search, I instead force what I think others expect to hear and believe me to be while I push my tests into a muddled state.

If you were to tell me my voice is the nine of hearts in a deck of cards, well, they’re flying about in the air around me, a mixture of face-up and down—seemingly no order—and I’m pulling and regarding…it is still yet to be found.

And even then, will that nine of hearts possess the essence of what my voice should be, is meant to be, will be?

See, the irony is that I know you, I see you…your bluffs are not deceptive to me. You hide behind an intricate pattern but your true self lies on the other side. One of fifty-two…unique, but not infinitely sole. Am I that too? Do I read more clearly than I think I come across, even as this voice struggles to find itself?

In the midst of this search, a dear happened to tell me about the time she remembers getting to know me. She pegged me as one “who would speak so freely and with such depth and passion about her relationship with the Lord. It seemed like everything she said always tied back to God. She seemed so sure of who she was.”

It sounds familiar; it does. And the words of Isaiah resound in my head over and over again…”Do you not know? Have you not heard?”

“Do you not know?”

“Have you not heard?”

Resound, may they pound, may they break away at the glass that is this sphere that within I am contained…to set free these other words, these clubs, diamonds and spades…that around me they may settle and those meant to remain may…leaving the hearts face-up until I find that elusive nine of which I am told is mine, my voice given by Him who has all say…

To then, hear, O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is One…this chosen race.

To love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength…these commandments to be upon this nine of hearts as I talk, as I walk, as I lie down and get up…

These then I shall bind to my mind and tie as symbols to my hands; these I will write on the frames of my house and on my gate…

To hear, to love, to remember, to know, to have heard. And somewhere in that glorious power of this Lord who shatters all containment and glass prisons…

There He holds my voice.


*Scripture from Isaiah 40 and Deuteronomy 6