The Poet's Voice

When I read a poem, I don't hear my voice in my head.
I don't hear what I think the writer sounds like either.
It is always the same voice(s), a girl and a boy who are the same person.
They are the same as the words on the page, the words on the screen.
(Is there a difference between them anymore?)
When the words behind my eyes want to live on the page, born through the pen,
I hear the voices again.

This time, they aren't reading old words from a screen, they read me my life as if it were written.
"A man and a woman exchange text messages, both talking past the other."
"A woman with nothing left but enough to live for watches imported English television and laughs."
"I am wearing a purple hoodie too thin for anything, and pants too large around the waste."
"He said... She said..."

The voices are dim, the words blurry, a hand cast out to touch the ephemeral poetry of my mind passes through them like metaphorical smoke or that fog thick enough to breathe.

The coffee.
I thought about it at 6.
Brewed it at 7.
Finished at 8?
Drank at 9.
Sipping the rest now, at 10 pm.
Why coffee at night? Because it makes the words clear.
Crisp, delicious, visceral and within reach.
The voices can be heard, transcribed, they are manifesting now, through the fingers on the keyboard.

I have not written a word tonight, just copied the voices and their words. Or are the voices just my way, that voice they tell me I have but I cannot see?

But this touch, this breath, the bleeding of the words onto the page.
It has begun.
Please.
Please, don't let it ever stop.