It would be dishonest to say that your voice no longer catches me off guard. You made it from the upstairs bedroom onto the radio while I wasn’t paying attention. I was too absorbed in my mystery novels. I plucked them from the local library shelves until the suspense section was entirely deflowered. I read until my eyes threatened to strip me of their service, and you sang until your voice begged to be used more and more.

We went to your grandfather’s funeral on a day where it had done nothing but rain. Our clothes became soaked through on the way home. The book in my bag became wrinkled with moisture and it still feels damp sometimes when I pick it up now. It feels wet like the wetness that grew in your voice and never faded from that day onward. All of my souvenirs are tucked away inside my books like that, but you wear yours blazoned across your chest. You carry them in your voice like charms on a chain. I like to imagine that I am the only person who can hear them all ring distinctly in your songs.

I think if I called you on the telephone and told you that I do not ever freeze in the supermarket aisles if they play your music over their speakers, I would be keeping the truth from you. Being thirteen was far from easy, and you did not make it any simpler. I was going to grow into something that would leap out of the spines of my mystery novels, yet I remained suffocated tight in the narrow margins. Had you not left me sleeping stunted in adolescence, perhaps I would have grown into a tall, full girl. But the only thing I have learned about adult life is how to lie. So if I ever hear from you again, I will tell you that I listen to you from time to time, that I’ve heard a song or two, but never that your voice is a siren asking me to evacuate the body of my girlhood.