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I could the voices singing more clearly now that I’d broken down the door. He wouldn’t be keeping me out or hiding behind it. Not any more.
I stopped for a moment, just to listen to the song. Sometimes it was his mature adult timbre, the one he used in the real world. At others, it was a boyish, vulnerable tremble, perhaps the tone of his inner child. His, or perhaps I should say their final voice plucked notes from the air that were beyond gender, finding a lilting tone between highs and lows with the intonation of a promise which could never be kept.
They were no longer secret, those inner voices. I’d broken down the door he’d erected within his own mind, keeping them to himself, keeping them safe from the world. I’d probed the cracks in the imaginary wood, widening them until his barrier could no longer withstand me.
This was a violation, an invasion of his inner self, but I’d wanted to hear the songs he kept locked away. What good did the door do, especially when it never opened, offering any communication between himself and anyone who might listen to his songs. The music was choking him, solidifying within him. This effected his physical as well as his mental and emotional health.
Yes, I could come up with excuse after excuse for what I’d done. My motivations, however, hadn’t been noble. Greedy for every part of him, I wanted what lay beyond the door. I wanted him to open it up and share. Once I heard a fragment of the song, I was no longer willing to wait. My hunger had been that rapacious.
It now made me blush with shame.
He looked at me through the splintered barrier, all of his hidden faces smiling, his voices free. “Thank you.”
“What for?” I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t step through what was left of the door, even after all I’d done to destroy it.
He’s the one who came to me, pushing his way through the broken slats until he stands before me. He took my chin in his hand and forced me to look at him. “May I tell you a secret?” He smiles as if he’s about to tell a joke. “I always wanted you to hear those songs. I pictured singing them to you, only my own fear created the door, locking them away inside me where no one could hear me sing. Or so I thought.”
He kissed my mouth just as my jaw dropped in astonishment. Here I’d been hating myself, thinking I’d violated him by kicking down the door.
Guess the joke was on me.
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