There have been times in my life when I have heard poems in my head. The first line will whisper to me the second I open my eyes. It repeats itself, over and over, until I stumble to my notebook to put the whole thing into words.

Normally this happens when I am bewildered by an emotion, or when I am overcome by grief, or joy. Prose seems too precise to hold the complexity of the mood that a poem will be a vessel for.

During these times, poetry spills out of me reckless and unbound. The images float to the surface of my brain, and I free them when I put them down on paper or on a screen.

Poems are not spilling out of me presently. I awaken each morning in silence. Words do not slosh and roll about me as I get out of bed.

I am stuck. Two poems sit in my draft file unfinished. Both are blazing with potential, but don’t seem to have a point. They are just beautiful gibberish.

One day, I hope that they will make sense and become a complete thought. Until then, I will try to recapture what it was I was trying to contain, and I will wait patiently for that artistic murmur to return to me.