Battered Artist

I see myself reflected in my craft. I touch the pen and feel my pulse, I see my future; anything I will ever be, clutched tightly between my fingers. Scribbling words, everything I've ever wanted, I've ever seen, I've ever yearned for, woven between lines on a page. I sit here in this room, the only one breathing in this class full of drones, silently protesting against the low buzz of monotony that is surrounding me. A number is placed in front of me - a single number - and it slowly crawls off of the page it is printed on and starts towards me, tries to envelop me, wrapping it's cold edges around my throat, pries the pen from my hand, covers my eyes. It holds tightly to me, and as I struggle to breathe, I recite words that I've written and committed to memory, words that sound like nothing but are everything; are my oxygen to breathe and my sorrow to hide, my smoke to exhale and watch swirl in shafts of light sliding in through a closed window. Ink flows like silk on paper, and I am the pen spilling my soul onto the page, scrawled words melting into each other.