Permanent Marks

As I looked outside my fogged window, a piece of dust on my printer caught my eye. I brushed it off and grabbed a piece of paper from the printer. Before sitting on my desk chair, I left my room to check the clock in my living room—it was twenty-three minutes past three in the morning. The clock looked odd, as if the hands were ticking in place. I brushed it off, knowing that it might have been one of my ordinary hallucinations.

I left my living room to enter my room. I placed my paper inches from my pen—the one I always had lying in the center of my desk. I used it a lot—whether it was when too many raindrops slid down my window, when a clock's hands seemed frozen, defying the undefeatable laws of time, or when my thoughts felt too heavy. My pen was my voice, my hero, and most importantly, my only escape from reality. 

I clicked the back of my pen, its sound echoing through a void in my mind and unraveling a realm away from reality. I flipped the pen through my fingers and placed its tip on the top left corner of my blank paper. I began writing the shape of the letter “A”, but the pen seemed to deny my stroke, leaving the paper blank despite my attempted mark. 

I kept trying again—this time, I pressed the pen harder onto the paper, yet it did not make any difference. I sat, contemplating, thinking of every word I had written and all of the immortal marks it had left in my mind. Though my pen had no eraser, I thought otherwise. I was sure it had an eraser, considering the fact that it erased the bolded nights of my mind. 

Unsure of whether my mind was fighting to comprehend the reality of my situation, I lifted the pen to my eye level, observing its shape under the muted light of my dark gray desk lamp. I could see faint scratches along it, and not one drop of ink in sight. 

Is this how it feels to lose something I had held on for so long?

It was as if I was holding onto a rose that had just grown thorns, or as if I had been surfing on a wave and the ocean had just halted it. I knew that at some point I would be obliged to answer to time’s relentless call, but it felt too soon. My pen had transformed me into a whole new person. And losing it would mean giving away myself. 

I knew I couldn’t keep the pen anymore. Part of me asked; what is the purpose of having 

a pen that doesn’t write? But another part of me refused to let it go. It refused to let the pen reside in my memory because letting it would trap all of my valued memories in one confined place, away from my grasp. 

I stared at the blank paper, I could almost hear my clock in the living room, which defeats the purpose of putting it there anyway. I could hear the minutes ticking as if they had known of my situation. I was unsure of whether it was making fun of me or not. But knowing time’s nature—relentless, unyielding, fleeting—I realized that it most definitely went on, not caring about my fear of losing my pen or the fact that I had seen its hands ticking in place earlier. 

After all, it was time’s nature. There was nothing grand to expect, though hearing the clock ticking annoyed me. I had placed it in the living room so that I could forget its continuous nature, and so that I could put an end to my endless dwelling and my fear of the future, attempting to focus on my other matters for once. 

But, I couldn’t. The thought of being unable to write with my pen anymore continued to haunt me. It felt like I had been a kid all over again—as if I had just lost my favorite teddy bear. The eyes of the bear stared back at me, wondering when I would finally get rid of it. I shook my head.

I could never. I couldn’t replace my pen. However, I knew that at some point, the ink would dry out, and it would only leave my paper blank when I tried to use it. But the thought of having to replace it hadn’t entered my mind, because, if it did, it wouldn’t have lasted long—the thought itself would be moved away, like a person I am forced to acknowledge but simply can’t.

Could this really be the end? I shook my thought away, as I heard a drop of rain crash onto my window. No, this can’t be. I couldn’t. My pen wasn’t working. Every time I heard rain against my window, I would have my pen in my hand, with already-filled papers piling on my desk. This time, it was different. I had my pen, but I knew that it would disappoint every line I drew, whispering of a reality I was afraid to face—a life without my pen, without my voice, without my escape, without my cure whenever my wounds feel too deep.

I told my thoughts to forget and to remember the words I had written instead. I reached out to my old papers, the ones that I had written yesterday and the days before. Holding them felt like grasping onto a memory, like talking to a corpse that was nothing but a corpse. This corpse was different though—it had exact replicas of it lying somewhere in the market, but there was only one of this one.

I placed my pen down, the sound of the heavy rain worsening. Maybe the raindrops were telling me something. But I had no way to decipher their messages, as my paper was blank. I tried to comprehend how disturbing it was to see my blank paper, waiting for a story to be written. I had no story to write. And for once, that was okay.

I stared at my window, listening to the violent yet blissful rain. Perhaps, I didn’t always have to write a story. The rain was telling me many, narrating of time’s undefeable laws. It was recalling memories and moments, with lessons that felt imprinted into my mind by a pen whose ink had been permanent.