Her Voice 

by Kelly Sargent


I was born an identical twin in Luxembourg.
My miniature mirror followed me after I stretched our pungent means out
into a land perched on cliffs.
It’s another girl, the makeshift midwife from next door must have announced 
in French to a perspiring woman I would never call
Mom.

My three-pound twin arrived unexpectedly
with a cry that she would never hear
— she was deaf. 

It wouldn’t matter, though, that French words declared her 
    a second 
and an adoption agency asked nine months later if a couple wanted to 
trade her in.
One day, she would hear
with the nut-brown eyes, then lidded shut,
and speak a language that was already foreign to them;

foreign because they had four ears that weren’t broken,
or because

they had four ears 
that were broken. 

I have one broken and one not,

but I didn’t know which one was which
until 23 minutes ago
              when I considered it. 

The ten tiny fingers she must have clenched 
that would one day be 
          her voice
differed from the vibrations in her throat that assuredly joined in chorus with mine 
to fill that stuffy, damp and narrow room.

I wonder if the sweaty stranger or her neighbor counted them.


* * * * *

"Her Voice" first appeared in Cerasus Magazine and will also appear in Kelly Sargent's forthcoming poetry chapbook, Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, Summer 2022).

Kelly Sargent is a hard of hearing author and artist whose works have appeared in more than forty literary publications. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her newest poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She wrote for a national newspaper for the Deaf, and currently serves as the creative nonfiction editor and an assistant nonfiction editor for two literary journals, as well as a reviewer for an organization dedicated to making visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.