Halcyon

ink never lies

 oh heavens, we did it again,
ink stains on our fingers,
inky silence, inky shame.
they never leave,
no matter how hard
you scrub them away, do they?

"don't write to me again,"
you said, crumpling the letters,
and yet your midnight note came
blotted, smudged, trembling
finding its way,
like a pen finding its cap,
into my plastic escape.

the midnight ink knows
far too much.
it remembers
even when the paper forgets.
because the quill never lies
it only bleeds,
into manuscripts
that never get published.

we wrote our names in the margins
of someone else's vows.
we drained the cartridge of need,
signed our guilt
in a secret contract,
in invisible ink.

our moments, smudged,
like wet, undried words
that nobody dares to read.
because who cares for manuscripts
never meant to be seen?

he wrote between the lines,
with a permanent marker,
on my borrowed skin.
"it's easier," he said,
"we can just discard either."
should've scrubbed the ink
from my wedding ring
when i had the chance.
but the rush, oh that rush,
that bluest adrenaline
stained my life instead.

he always capped the pen
before he left the room.
every secret needs a scribe,
and oh, look, i was his.
on darker, inky nights
when we rewrote our manuscripts,
he wrote her name in cursive,
mine in calligraphy.
i suppose guilt,
when dressed in flourish,
looks prettier that way.