Signed, From The Floor

I cannot write what I do not feel. I cannot feel what I do not know. To write without passion is to kneel at the nameless grave and weep, to mourn the soil and not the dead, to beg meaning from dust and call it poetry. I lie on the floor of my bathroom just to feel the weight of my bones. Cool tile against warm flesh, as if the divide between body and ground might spark something some rebellion of thought against the white noise of nothing. I scroll the blank screen, cursor blinking like a flatline. There is no pulse, no poem. And still I return no better than the hand that finds comfort in the bottle, each stanza a swig, each line a confession. I only write when I’m bleeding. I only bleed when I’m empty.