Your voice has changed a lot since we were younger, but even with the years, it’s as comforting as ever. I can hear you speaking to me when you think I’m sleeping. I can hear the way the sweet timbre of your whispers, the clear diction of your words will slow down, close up. They’ll be interrupted with intermittent pauses, then a sniffle, as you try to stay quiet so I won’t wake up. But I can hear it all so clearly.

I haven’t heard you sing in a while. You used to tell me that you’d become a famous singer, but your mom told you that you were too shy to get on stage. I remember the time in fifth grade when you froze up during the talent show, and I had to hold your hand, give it a gentle squeeze. Tell you it was okay to be scared. When we went back home, you sang to me in your small yellow bedroom to prove that you knew all the lyrics. We went on a karaoke spree that afternoon, and your mom had to come up and tell us to stop before our voices went hoarse, and you told her that you loved singing, so that would never happen.

And I love your voice when you sing.

You probably don’t know how it reaches me, circles around my ears teasingly and crawls into my body, spreading it with warmth. They say that the reason we hate recordings of our voices so much is because it sounds so different from how we are used to hearing it, but in our recordings, your voice was always there with mine, and I couldn’t even remember how my voice s