To Hear Yourself Talk

To Hear Yourself Talk

Do you like to hear yourself talk.
Have you tried to catch the tail ends
of words whipping back at you,
the thin string of a balloon pulling free
from your hand as it swims up and away.
Can you hear your voice as you activate it.
Wrestle your brain away from your mouth
and find the final phonemes as they dissolve
into silence. Cradle the sounds between
your ear and your neck, allow them to unfurl
and fade: an r-colored vowel, slurred,
the dull blade of the /d/ dropped.
Who doesn’t like to hear their own machinery,
these words suggesting themselves.