The TV’s off, has been for days,
but the hiss still finds its wicked ways.
Faint at first, just a crackle in the dark,
then names in fragments,
clear and stark.
I heard mine once, whispered slow,
from a voice too young to even know.
It said, “He lies when he says he’s fine,”
then laughed in time with the exit sign.
I turned the set to face the wall,
but the voices seeped through it all.
They climb the wires and pulse in light,
singing lullabies
not meant for night.
Little voices in the hiss and hum,
speaking truths too close,
too automatic.
They drone in tongues
and bleed in rhyme,
rewinding guilt in pixel time.
They talk about her–
the one I erased,
describe her eyes,
her shattered face.
And when I scream to drown them out,
they loop the sound
and feed my doubt.
They once described a thing I did,
that no one saw,
that I always hid.
And every time the signal jumps,
they whisper it back
between the thumps.
I asked the doctor if machines could feel,
he laughed and said,
“Not unless they kneel.”
But that night the TV flickered blue,
and said, “He lied, and we lie too.”
Now I don’t plug anything in at all,
but they still buzz behind the wall.
Even the radio sings my crimes,
in ad breaks spaced between the chimes.
Little voices in the hiss and hum
sound just like me,
like a version that never got free.
So when you hear that low white drone–
don’t listen.
Or you’ll become one.