OPEN SESSION

I am momentarily blinded by my own steam as it rises from the hard-earned contours of my body. I squint through this mist of exertion at the silhouettes gathered against the window opposite. They want poetry, transcendence, some epiphany to ignite their writing - anything but the blood in the bucket, or the casually-ruptured spleen. I give them some brutality to bite down upon: I dip and swivel, skimming the ring as I dance from phantom aggressors, before puncturing the air with unholy clusters of punches. They scrawl shorthand across notepads with snub-nosed pencils, convinced they have unpicked the mystery. But their prose cannot contain me and their text will not define me, for with every bout I am born again.