Robert Sean Leonard’s Voice

At 6:15 a.m., in the dark today, a voice came down through the wires and I felt it. I recognized it.

It was the poetry of my youth, the angst I can only recall theoretically now.

It was carrying on a sedan chair the missed opportunities (what could those be?) that I imagine each day dissolve into yesterday’s twilight.

It sculpted the darkness of longing from Luis Alberto Urrea and reservations of South Dakota I’ve never known but remember: deserts of our childhood we wander forever.

Inside, it was laughing, a warm caramel swirl over recommendations from friends that I rebuffed — in London — then finally gave into when I’d lost contact and was desperate from some connection again. In the humor of “House,” odd friendships find refuge.

And the light rises, beside us, in the cold morning darkness. I’m not alone. Inside my head, the voice of my lonely years is a bridge carrying me from strained teen sonnets into the bleakness of middle age novels.

 It wraps me in strange pure comfort, on a walk in the morning, far from someone else’s idea of home.