I’ve had a purple ink pen for years I can’t count. I can’t even recall when or how I got it, but I named it my favourite. I kept it standing in the same place, rarely using it lest its ink runs out. I wanted to prolong its life, I’ve searched for similar purple ink pens and I found many, but not like my favourite – not even close.

Mine was as purple as bruises, as veins, or you could say as berry in Spring, as the sky at dawn, as the perfect negative image of vivid emerald. Other pens had purple ink that was just purple. My pen had all those stories to tell and meanings put in eloquent words on papers, or scratch on the corner of my memo while I am lost in thought. But I was afraid to lose it so I kept it safe. Or so thought I.

Today I decided to write a poem with it. Once I held it, its ink blotted my hand. It was blaming me. I dabbed it with a paper and a tissue, but it kept screaming at my fingers with its purple stains spreading on my hands the more I wrote with it. Its ink on paper was pale. It has lost its passion to tell all those long narratives in purple. It was angry and sick, choking for freedom, thwarting all the blame on my excessive love that turned its cap into a sunless cave. I had to apologize. I wrote my poem with my dry pen and ink-bruised hand. My skin was endorsed with its unique purple ink. It wouldn’t let go no matter how I washed it off. And deep down inside, I wanted the purple ink to stay, to tell all the metaphors it had in store for decades. I was lonely and it had all what could color my grey days with purple sunsets, irises, nebula – with lively purple ink.

– My Purple Ink Pen.

March 31st, 2019.