A voice unmasked

I played the message back—

my voice cracked, thin as threadbare cloth,

shaky and small, a broken thing.

It was me and not me,

a stranger caught between the words,

the truth slipping past my lips

before I knew what I said.

Listening close, I heard the fractures,

the tired pulls beneath the sound,

the self I hide from even myself,

bare and tremulous in the cold speaker.

This voice, a cracked mirror,

reflects everything I want to deny.