Chapter 1
The pen drops suddenly out of my hand, causing my body to jolt and move further backwards. For a split second, memory presents itself as a mirror to my imagination, clear and cut. And then, it dissolves into utter darkness.
Matters would only unravel further if I dared to intervene. My presence is like of sour lemon dripping into milk, but the intention was never to form cheese.
Or maybe I’m too abstract. I’m in a constant haze. My thoughts are alluring, but only when I dream of them. But then again, all I find myself dreaming of is ink and blood.
Oh mighty! What an odd combination, you might as well inquire. And yes, you can call my thoughts penumbral, hiding and shying away like a kid from his furious father. But my mind, oh, insane as it is, puts itself in a partial shadow where light and darkness merge. Where memories exist, but part factual, part constructed.
Maybe that is why my dreams are often forgotten. The emotions I felt, the heaving of the heart, the shortness of breath, the realisation of letting go of something that I loved the most. Not the most, but to some extent. To a great extent. It can’t be measured; it’s not to be foolishly put on a scale and numbered. Rather, it is precious. Too precious to forget, too hard to remember, and too detrimental to say out loud.
And again, I derailed off the topic. What was I even blabbering about? INK. BLOOD. GRIEF
I ran out of ink once. My father hastened me to the nearby shop, just so I could get it refilled. He said that I should write my thoughts down, those same insane thoughts, else my conscious would function as a chiaroscuro of lived reality, where truth and mythology would become easily liminal.
The interplay, as I say, between what I definitively remember and unconsciously fabricate is astonishing. To suppose that my mind will comprehend losing; losing in war, losing in heart, the same thing. Those bright, sharp moments, when the world seemed to be at its peak, and then the ones where I ran out of ink again.
To this day, my memory remains a palimpsest, an ancient manuscript where each new writing partially erases but doesn’t completely obscure previous writings.
I may be a medieval scribe, scraped and forgotten, The ink runs out often than I can fathom. My hands are cold, but from the sore, He’s standing at the doorway, and the door is ajar. But my transition ends, and the liminal space vanishes, Just me, my ink pen, and blood that I didn’t ravage. Will I save myself from the agony of the memory to be forgotten? Or will I drown in the flood of the ink that I poured in the pen?
