(Part II of The Quiet Plague of Ink)
No one remembers the first line anymore.
Some swear it was written.
Others whisper it was read.
And a few, trembling, insist
It had always been there,
Like breath before lungs were born.
They gather, the sleepless ones—
Those marked by murmuring syllables,
Those who dream in ink and wake
With stains upon their palms.
Their pens twitch of their own accord,
Drawing spirals, sigils,
Maps that lead to nothing yet feel familiar.
They think they write to share it,
But what if the poem writes through them?
What if every keystroke,
Every quivering verse,
Is the poem’s way of expanding its lungs?
There are nights when one of them wakes
With a phrase already finished,
Though they never began it.
There are moments when readers
Feel a pressure behind the eyes—
A soft, electric ache—
And find, to their horror and wonder,
That words have formed within them,
Yearning for release.
It doesn’t spread through sight or sound—
No, it’s subtler than that.
It travels through the pause
Between two thoughts,
Through the hush that follows beauty,
Through the gasp before a word is born.
They have tried to name it—
Muse, virus, ghost, god—
But each name fades,
Consumed by the very poem it sought to define.
For who infected whom?
Did the poet awaken it,
Or did the poem invent the poet to give itself a voice?
Did the reader catch it from the page,
Or was the page waiting for them
Since the dawn of unwritten time?
Listen closely—
Even now, it hums beneath your breath,
Rearranging your pulse into meter,
Your silence into rhyme.
You are no longer outside it.
You never were.
And when you write your next line—
(you will, you must)—
It will not be you who writes.
It will be It,
Using your trembling hand
To pull itself further
Into the world.
No one knows how it ends.
Perhaps it cannot.
Perhaps ending is the only thing
It never learned how to do.
Somewhere, unseen,
A new reader begins to read,
And the circle tightens.
The echo deepens.
The ink grows warm.
And the poem—
The poem smiles again,
For it has found another voice.
And it is yours.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 4:51 PM UTC
(Part II of The Quiet Plague of Ink)
No one remembers the first line anymore.
Some swear it was written.
Others whisper it was read.
And a few, trembling, insist
It had always been there,
Like breath before lungs were born.
They gather, the sleepless ones—
Those marked by murmuring syllables,
Those who dream in ink and wake
With stains upon their palms.
Their pens twitch of their own accord,
Drawing spirals, sigils,
Maps that lead to nothing yet feel familiar.
They think they write to share it,
But what if the poem writes through them?
What if every keystroke,
Every quivering verse,
Is the poem’s way of expanding its lungs?
There are nights when one of them wakes
With a phrase already finished,
Though they never began it.
There are moments when readers
Feel a pressure behind the eyes—
A soft, electric ache—
And find, to their horror and wonder,
That words have formed within them,
Yearning for release.
It doesn’t spread through sight or sound—
No, it’s subtler than that.
It travels through the pause
Between two thoughts,
Through the hush that follows beauty,
Through the gasp before a word is born.
They have tried to name it—
Muse, virus, ghost, god—
But each name fades,
Consumed by the very poem it sought to define.
For who infected whom?
Did the poet awaken it,
Or did the poem invent the poet to give itself a voice?
Did the reader catch it from the page,
Or was the page waiting for them
Since the dawn of unwritten time?
Listen closely—
Even now, it hums beneath your breath,
Rearranging your pulse into meter,
Your silence into rhyme.
You are no longer outside it.
You never were.
And when you write your next line—
(you will, you must)—
It will not be you who writes.
It will be It,
Using your trembling hand
To pull itself further
Into the world.
No one knows how it ends.
Perhaps it cannot.
Perhaps ending is the only thing
It never learned how to do.
Somewhere, unseen,
A new reader begins to read,
And the circle tightens.
The echo deepens.
The ink grows warm.
And the poem—
The poem smiles again,
For it has found another voice.
And it is yours.
And to write another continuation? 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
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