Words. Those beautiful shapes that flow from pen to paper, mouth to ear, mind to dreams. They fill up my soul, create an itch in the back of my subconscious impossible to ignore. Eventually, the words build up so much pressure that they burst forth from the dam of ignorance placed ineffectively between thoughts and expression; my fingers ooze ink as dreams, images, words burst into being. At last, my conscious is calm; the flowing sentences act as a lullaby to the restless cries rooted in suppression.

Body and soul, I pour myself onto the paper, unable to hold back even a minute piece of my essence. Helpless against the desire to form the loops and swirls leading to my demise, I write with everything I have. Mind, body, heart, soul, dreams – I am a prisoner of the ink, held captive within paper fibers. Like an addict searching for just one more fix, my hands ache for a pen; my mind wails for a record of thoughts; my palm longs to feel the soft rasp of pressed, wooden pulp slide underneath it as my soul is purged of it's essence.

Yet logic – Oh, poor logic! – screams for rationality, warns of the danger each stroke of the pen presents; it knows that if I'm not careful I'll give too much to my writing – I'll put so much of myself in that I'll forget we're separate beings, my works and I. Despite the warnings – the constant sirens vibrating within my skull – I cannot pay heed to logic, for without writing I'd lose myself. Without writing – the swirls of ink, the rasp of skin on paper, the exchange of soul for sensual pleasure – I am just a body without it's essence; a person whose very lifeblood has run out. Without words, ink, the constant flow from mind to page - I am simply an empty vessel drifting, pushed by the surrounding currents.