i have this sinking feeling that i will never write again.

that all of the hurt
that i used to infuse into poems
has run dry.

i let the blood sit in my body,
simmer around my bones,
force myself to bottle
the trauma until it burned.

each time i wrote i rationed
out a little of the overflowing pain,
let it trickle,
and drip onto page.

but all at once i poured
crimson so now poems
exist - flooded red.

poems, whose words were so
deeply engraved in my soul
that nothing exists there now.

because they are living,
outside of me.

there is no life to feed the art.

just this emptiness.

and it should be freeing,
the purging of all this pain.

but it's not,
because i can not write
with any form of brilliance,
now that this thing has been
written out of me.

(should i have held onto the pain,
sacrificed living,
just to give art?)