There is a monster inside me, with sharp teeth and claws

There is a monster inside me, with sharp teeth and claws, Gnawing at the walls of my skull, scratching deeply down my mute throat, It thrusts its hands deep between my ribs, searching for nonexistent words, I sit before the blank page, a cold slab that mocks me, A morgue drawer for all the things I cannot say. I bleed ink, but it clots before it touches the paper, The letters choke themselves before they see the light, Every sentence struggles and dies in my hands, A stillborn thought, an unfulfilled phrase's corpse. I want to scream in metaphors, but they crawl up my throat like insects, And I bite, crushing syllables, my teeth enveloped in the taste of unfinished poetry. I stab the pen into the page. Nothing. I tear at the margins. Nothing. I try to carve words into my skin, but even my blood refuses to spell, What do you do when words betray you, when they fold their arms and turn away? When they become Judas in your mouth, kissing you only to leave you empty? Somewhere, a poet is drowning in verses, Somewhere, a writer is setting fire to their own pages, And I am here, choking on the ashes of a story, That will never be told, a mute echo in a deaf universe.