Claudia Gary
Hyperacusis
‘an auditory phenomenon described as a hypersensitivity to everyday sound’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196070918309803#bb0020
Although there was a time
I might have heard you whisper
from another room
nowadays the pain
of too-loud noise is with me
more often than the songs
of catbird, robin, crow,
piercing, stroking, weaving
their learned and inborn patterns
into morning air.
After spending time
with someone whose voice thundered
I treasure birdsongs more.
Their return was gradual.
How could I not have noticed
that they were fading from me?
So powerful was the sway
of being wanted.