Your voice is alive
inside my mind.
You are at once my inner critic
and troublemaker, 
my champion: 

an avant-garde storyteller
of my many imagined failures and 
research biologist 
of my lifestyle choices.

You speak to me
as powerfully as would 
a hungry lion's roar
or the oncoming thunder 
of a stampeding elephant.

Your words are as soft
as a danedlion flower
dancing in the breeze,
as still as a wide, cold river

and as bluntly honest 
as a brillo pad against a dirty pan.
My inner armies of free will, 
dignity, and self-respect 

seek each day to retreat, 
evade, outwit and escape you
but each day they find 
there is nowhere to hide...

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