But what happens when I can still hear them/me.

It was unfortunate. My voice. How when heard, it never failed to suggest my being there. And yet, never was I always. So who was responsible for the deception: the voice or the ear? I swear I wish I knew for it is definitely deceitful, being it feels difficult—the constant activity and ceaseless changing or at least the expectation that I am never not being. To live up to this fate requires a high I have never been confident I can maintain. Maintain without crashing. Chipping tooth and splitting spine on spiral downward. And even during plunge toward passive tense, I’d persist in inhaling. Truly, addicted to life force. But even now, I cannot promise whom I will end up as. And I should never know! Because when this much awaited and insignificantly anticipated event takes place, I will not be present. Ah, I may care here and now, but ultimately whatever I am captured for and seen as won’t matter much to me. So don’t dare to find a way for me to hear it. I promise my body won’t be wanted back once I am finally free of its encumbering existence. (It isn’t mine, even though, yes, I may be attached to it or it to me, but you see, this happens often, this attachment that is). Keep myself away! I give you and all others permission. But this matter won’t happen soon—at least I have my Self believe—so it is of no critical concern, simply let us promise not to betray our promises. And anyway, really, there is no way of knowing who we are or which one of us will forget to live first and in doing so, be finished with time. But this doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to figure this “I” out. Already, always, again and again. Until…Oh, enough! Already? Yes yes, enough!

But my words must go on because the thoughts won’t die out.

It was unfortunate. My voice. How when heard, it never keeps listeners from assuming I am someone I, myself, haven’t felt I live being. And even if they themselves would argue they are not defining me as one way or an other, it was no doubt unfortunate they attached certain qualities I never regarded myself with having. This voice of not me, but my words, I ask you: How is it we permit you such power to project who I am heard as and what I am not thought to be? Yet another controlling me!

Why? Yes, I wonder too. The class of bobbing heads rise up, fall down over the mere utterance of love. A trope, I think, for attachment. But I don’t share that. I don’t let myself sound as critical as I know myself to be. Inside me this urge to shake, to smother, to laugh and roll my eyes. Twenty-three females theorizing love, standing in for the lover, others speaking on behalf of the beloved. The dialogue of crushes set their faces aflame. A word I’d rather stomp out when I hear injected with importance in the claim, “I have a crush on Tom Cruise. He’s so wonderful and perfect. So well traveled and affected.” I can’t help it. I can’t help my hand from jetting through air. Reaching out, me! me!, my voice it has something it wants to say, would like to ask. “I think this whole notion of the crush is underdeveloped. The mere use of it is a reminiscer for childhood. And so far the class seems to define the crush as an unattainable object of undeserved fascination.” My voice has said too many words, together falling very, very short of a question. To them, the truth is I am how I sound. Right now, I am a smattering of fear and right then those whispering girls fear who I am. Who cares who I was at birth when no one is comforted by who I have become. Crushed by abandonment. They fear their future is reflected in me.

Those girls whispering. Across the table. They free their mind, unraveling my core with a narrow selection of words. Plunging depths without remorse for my interior. Those whispering girls. Epitomize the distance between self and other. I share my Tuesday and Thursday morning with those girls, their whispers. Those girls that always whisper. And when there isn’t a shallow vowel rubbing out through throat, they scribble words on loose-leaf. Tear my waist in half. I catch their eye as they are breathing “hang’er up” with pen on paper. What’s worse than whispers—ink, the irrevocable trace of having been.

To survive, I become drugged—a passive unfamiliar stateless self. My eyes close to escape sobriety. To escape committing to a promise. The promise of being some way I am not certain I will be, continually. To escape the practice of commonality, control, clarity—indulging in sense, not sensation—pledging to be not I but one and the same—to escape nothing, I close my eyes.

See, those whispering girls were always absent, until they began sharing their Tuesday and Thursday mornings with me. Until those meaningless girls became visual. Until those girls took it even further! Until they became phonetic, physical beings. To escape what I know they know, to escape the self I am seen as, I close my eyes. Blind behind lids, I abandon their being. Again and again. Their exhaustion allows me to be free. Allows me to be me, the me I'll think myself to be. In blackness, reflecting nothing, they are all the same: in visible and no one. For each other, we are back to being as we were. Not sensed. Safe. Fortunate to be unknown.