The Weight of Ink

Before screens hummed in my palms,

I carried paper like a secret country.

Five hundred pages once—

handwritten, stubborn, alive—

a decade old and still breathing

each time I return to edit its pulse.

I have always believed

a pen chooses its writer.

My journal demanded loyalty—

one specific pen,

as sacred as a vow.

I bought a Swarovski one once,

crystals winking in the light,

resting in its velvet box

like something royal.

It was not the smoothest—

but it whispered,

you can sparkle too.

Then there was the Poppin pen

from Chapters/Indigo—

bright, unassuming,

a university survival tool

when my laptop failed me.

I snapped off the tiny gel bead,

pressed tip to paper—

and it flowed.

Not ink.

Momentum.

It glided like thought before doubt,

so smooth I hid it from classmates—

because “borrow”

meant goodbye forever.

I kept writing after lectures ended,

doodling joy into margins

as if language had returned home.

I tried erasable pens too—

Frixion miracles

that vanished without ghosts of blue,

leaving only the quiet dent

of what once existed.

A perfect pen is balance—

neither heavy nor fragile,

an extension of nerve and breath.

It turns silence into permanence.

Contracts become law.

Ideas become architecture.

Grief becomes legible.

Without ink,

would we know Shakespeare,

Emily Dickinson,

Pablo Neruda,

Mary Oliver?

The pen is small—

yet it builds memory.

It makes history stand still long enough

to be read.

And so I say again, dear reader—

the pen is not just mightier than the sword.

It is gentler.

And it lasts longer.