My Voice

Structure & Form

Reduction as architecture — line length decreasing deliberately toward the end, the poem collapsing inward. The arc isn't just emotional, it's visual and spatial.
Dual voice — main lines carry the statement; indented parentheticals carry the inner voice. The two registers never merge. The aside comments on the statement without resolving it.
Lowercase for the interior — the parenthetical voice stays lowercase throughout. It signals intimacy, quietness, something that doesn't need to announce itself.
Silence earns its place — white space and fragmentation are structural, not decorative. "I ." with its trailing space is a deliberate gesture, not a typo.

Melancholic but not self-pitying. The grief is held at a distance, observed rather than performed.
Restraint over explanation. The poem trusts the reader. What's left unsaid carries as much weight as what's written.
The unspeakable is the subject — writing around a thing rather than naming it directly ("I dare not speak of her, lest my words corrupt what remains of her perfection").

Grounded in the physical and sensory — piano keys, rain, the specific texture of a memory rather than abstraction.
Avoids cliché by reaching for the precise image ("the keys she once feathered").
Memory as something that can be tainted by language — words are blunt instruments against feeling.

Em dashes for interruption or apposition, not decoration.
Parentheses as a container for the inner voice, not an aside to the reader.
Line length is meaningful — a longer line has more weight, a shorter one more urgency or fragility.

Love, memory, loss — specifically the ache of a past relationship held in careful custody.
Music as a site of memory and feeling (the piano).
The tension between speaking and silence, naming and protecting.

Started 2026-04-09. Updated each writing session.