Work Text:
You first lifted the pen when you were eleven. It was light and comfortable in your hand, a perfect fit. A little machine you didn’t quite understand, but one that brushed beautifully across the paper piled around you. Days flew by and stacks of paper transformed into a collage of sheets littering the floor, engraved with images from a restless mind and confessions you’d never share.
You can only wonder where those early drawings are now, how to find again those ideas that bloomed in your youth. There’s a sag, a depressing pull to your body after finally finishing the day’s work. Relief seems as elusive as those childhood dreams, knowing the cycle will begin anew tomorrow. Void of anything that could resemble a scrap of paper, the hardwood floor beneath your feet is clean to a mirror shine.
Despite your best efforts, your gaze sinks down and finds a reflection staring right back up at you. An uncomfortable prickling grows outward from your stomach, but you can’t stop looking regardless. It almost looks like you. Wounds litter the reflection’s face, and exhaustion is clear in its graying eyebags and deflated cheeks. The you of eleven, all mischievous grins and rosy flushes, would probably fail to recognize it. The thought causes your fingers to clench, curling tightly around a machine that drags you down further with its weight. You still have your pen.
With coarse breath and tense shoulders begins a tired process. Sitting at a sharply lit desk, ink oozes from your wounds, snaking along your skin in tendrils to vanish inside that little machine. It’s remarkable that something so small can bear so much weight. Your pen bleeds your hurt out onto a canvas, scars and desires in the deep, dark shade of black ink. It is a wicked and beautiful thing to behold. Raising it up to the light, the product of your wounds illuminated on a page that will eternally trap them, you decide not to simply dispose of it this time. Instead, you send it far away, out into the world where you shall never see it again.
***
She knocked on your door some time later. The first thing you notice is her face, the softness of her cheeks squished upwards by a kind smile. The second thing you notice is the piece of paper folded in half by gentle hands. It obscures what’s inside, but you quickly recognize the shadow, the imprint of what lies within. The very same you never wanted to see again.
Before you can say a word, she takes a confident step forward, crossing the threshold into your home with a warm sigh. You do not recognize her, but you do recognize the wounds that creep out from beneath her neat presentation, ones that might be invisible to the eye if you didn’t share the same. Regardless of your staring, she moves to sit at your desk, fingers sliding across the surface until they find both a blank piece of paper and your pen. You stand still, waiting for the instant the stranger balks at how heavy it is, winces at the crust of dried ink around the handle.
In her hands, the pen glides across the page like a child’s crayon. Immediately, you are captivated by flowing lines and detailed flourishes. Scenes of hands linked together, flowers and blooming fields that brim with life. She creates little worlds, moments that leap from the page and fill you with warmth and comfort. They nestle deep into the wounds within you that you’d tried to drain onto paper. You had only thought of removing the hurt, after all, not that something new could grow from it just as easily.
The girl’s hand stills with one last flick of the pen. Having witnessed each other’s wounds, with her pieces beating vividly inside you, she no longer feels like a stranger. Standing from the desk, with the pen returned to rest, she begins to walk back to your home’s threshold. This at least, stirs you to action. Your eyes find hers, and the dim gaze she returns communicates the bitter truth. Her time visiting you is already at its end. The look you share claws at your heart, but the last words she whispers, turning over her shoulder in the doorway, lights a fire in the pieces of her she has gifted to you.
“Thank you.”
No sooner than the moment the door closes are you sitting before your desk, pen just a touch more comfortable to hold. It twitches within your grip as tears fog your vision, but there is sweetness in these memories as well. Even more pressing, looking upon a stained canvas with so much potential, is the question you know has defined you since the very first time, one that will define you the rest of your days.
What shall you create next?