Read this silently:

LITR0110B: Poetry I

Date: 3/2025

Assignment: Write a poem with the tone, direction, and diction of someone writing in their own private journal.

Read this silently:

My mind often speaks in a voice not my own.

Typically, the tenor and pitch of this conscience relates to 
someone who holds importance to my
current circumstance
like if I just checked out at the grocery store and after buckling
my seatbelt, I realize that I forgot the peas at the register, the bag boy
with the burgeoning vocal shifts of pre-pubescence would remind me of
my mistake rather than a reflection 
– as we can only know a skewed perspective of our own speech
because pitch shifts as it passes through bone – 
                  of my own nagging voice.

The narrator of my inner monologue tells me more about my reality
  than my mind can comprehend, as it is through 
    this subconscious filter that I realize who holds importance to my
      current circumstance
        like if I’m seeing about a boy and I look in the mirror and he tells me
          that my hair looks odd pinned that way it’s actually a good thing 
            because it means that he’s in there now
          but sometimes it also kind of sucks because I don’t want my mother telling
        me that I don’t mind the way my body looks naked or for my father
      to remind me to buy period products before next week.

Sometimes I think in a voice that I cannot place and that bothers
  me because who wants an unwelcome guest in their own home
    – let alone their own mind – 
      but I guess if I opened the door at some point and let them keep
        on their shoes who am I to get
          mad at the dirt?