Steven R. Kraaijeveld

Short Fiction

Be more direct, you said. There is no distinct voice here, you said, annihilating my existence as if it were nothing. As if voice ever materializes, as if voice isn’t dispersed endlessly across the winds, the words, singing quietly in unstable rhythms and far-flung allusions, part-alive in half-lit memories, slinking into the veiled ethereal core of time-escaped being. There is so much to hear, there is indescribably more to hear, if only you would suppress that haggard desire, if only you could ignore that splinter, the distinct voice. What value does it have? A voice boxing your ears, a voice clear-ringing and straight-piercing—anyone can hear a voice like that. Sounded, signed, written—there’s nothing to it. I do not understand the laurels, the pride. Children are called to attention by their teacher’s commanding voice. Pay attention little Charlie, wee Angela, listen now. Let us reject these timeworn schoolmaster desires. If you didn’t hear a voice, my voice, it is because you didn’t listen—you didn’t care to listen. I know it, we all know it, and so long as we are honest there is no shame in it, because no one truly listens anyway. How could we, aswim in a universe of noise? Clattering voices form the shell of our existence. Few try to break through. Most chase the distinct voice desperate for something substantial to cling onto, some defined and circumscribed target to gesture at, a way to avoid aligning the inner ear with the void that homes the smoldering of all sound’s traces. I, I have my scattered murmurings, feverish mussitations, the foaming signs of speech within me that dissipate instantly in wan mists and gloriously flung subtexts, my steadfast refusal to state the thing directly, my absolute refusal to say the thing distinctly, as if our world ever offers us pure particularity. W. S. already proclaimed it, obliterating your judgment long before you arrived at it, for the thing is never the thing, and distinct voice is no truer voice. Expect no auditory creature, no being voicedly, no chaunting specter personified. I cannot address you more plainly than this. And I ask you, free of bitterness, with all the good will in my softly beating-away heart, are you happy now?

---

Steven R. Kraaijeveld is a Dutch philosopher, ethicist, and writer who grew up in Czechia, China, and the Philippines. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in ANMLY, Chicago Quarterly Review, Epiphany, Massachusetts Review, Maudlin House, and MoonPark Review. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2026 and Best Microfiction 2026 and he was a finalist in Fugue’s 2025 Prose Contest. Find out more about him on Instagram @esarkaye or through his website: stevenrkraaijeveld.com.