I. Love’s Voice

Like honey dripping from the sweetest mouth,

Your whispered words upon me land,

To caress my skin, then melt like clay,

As though they were never there.

Syllables softly slurred into bedsheets,

Slowly at first. Your words, then hers, then his.

Sentiments remembered, forgotten, lost.

Our voices intermingled, tangled, then

Separate.

II.

Purity twists into grey; uncertainty.

Your lover’s words become like snakes,

Your kisses on my neck; coils to strangle me,

The words from your tongue drip like poison.

Your voice; once tender, now cuts me.

And into my life this hurt, this

                                                uncertainty, bleeds.

In my fragility I leant on your distortion,

You trampled on my voice.

Now I trample upon it too.

III. Fear Voiced

Utterances disguised as my own, but

                                                              not my own

Plague me. Venomous words ooze

                                                   like drops of acid,

Out of her mouth. My mind’s mouth.

Her presence overwhelms that of my own.

Her voice is toxic.

A faceless stranger, this depression

                                                     upon me creeps,

And like a void she takes. Piece by

                                                       piece I crumble

Under her oppression. Until I become a void

                                                                 in myself.

Devoid of me, devoid of life, devoid of voice.

Collapsing inward.

IV. 

And my heart races, though not like before;

In these moments I cannot breathe, I

                                                         cannot speak.

My thoughts become screams, and I become

Crippled by the intensity of emotion of

                                                     my own making.

The voice has become me, and I the voice.

Whole days spent in bed with a new lover,

The blinds drawn, we sit in darkness.

My tongue rendered to her, my soul

Trapped.

V. My Voice

Thus, I wonder, having lived so little but

                                                                    so long,

If there are any fragments of me I can claim

                                                          truly as mine.

Still, I hear her voice. Then yours, then

                                                         his soon after,

Until I can no longer hear my own.

My words spoken over, drowned out,

By thoughts which have been

                                interrupted countless times.

I wonder if I am capable of finishing

                                                  anything anymore;

Much less my own sentences.

And this the greatest sentence of all;

Life without life. With speech diminished.

Like a river your voice flows smooth,

Over me, to graze my skin.

But the water carries rocks.