Vocal Fry

She hibernates, stuck in a crawl, storing fat and meat.
When I balk at differences, creative and gender-like,
shepokes a finger into my rib.

It is my voice. And it wants its center-pull.I
glide on by and own an innate fascination with looking
pained and reticent.

Always hoping, I guess, that people will identify my
dangling participles as inner fortitude. Something worth
digging for.

For someone, already tuning to her,to call out and
name me "The Best Contradiction this side of the lake!"
'Cuz I'll stand by my bid to make complexity cool.

And isn't, I realize, what I'm feigning anymore that counts.
It is the formica underneath my lamination that makes
the woodwork bend and break and maggots find me.

But for moons and moons now I've been building and this
house is starting to look a lot like that brown-haired boy
who bites his nails. A lot like exactly.

And that's where she lives. Nailing windows shut and tossing
afghans on her feet. Cuddling up to the backs of my eyelids
and swaying with my acid reflux.

Every so often she gets a yen to pound some walls but only
half-asses a toss of her tangling hair. Content to hole up
with half-formed nuggets of news.

So I can't really call her my voice anymore.
She's my victim, decaying to get out.