it's my turn to stain the ink

there i was on a lazy wednesday afternoon, scrolling through substack notes as one does, when i came across

sahara

’s note, and i was immediately struck with the urge to write a poem. p.s. thank you sahara for letting me use your note as a prompt!

source

I'm sorry if my writing gets  
incoherent at times,  
if the lines run jagged,  
fractured like glass  
splintered by a hand  
too heavy, too full of  
everything i can't hold  
inside. i bleed into  
everything i make,  
words smeared with the echoes  
of thoughts that unravel  
faster than i can catch them.

i don't know how to write  
without spilling pieces of myself—  
each sentence a vein  
i open, each metaphor a pulse  
pushing blood onto pages  
meant to stay clean.  
but how do you stay clean  
when your heart beats messy  
and your hands hold ghosts  
too stubborn to let go?

the ink gets tangled with me,  
with memories i didn’t ask for,  
and feelings that linger long after  
they should have faded.  
so i stitch these sentences  
like patchwork skin,  
hoping they’ll heal  
the parts i’ve torn open  
without meaning to.

sometimes the words slip,  
tripping over themselves  
in their rush to escape,  
to be seen.

when i write, the ink 
mixes with my blood
turning into a rich purple and 
whenever i write, i am
making everything mine
almost like a
perverted midas’ touch

there’s a mess in the margin
a tear in the verse
but isn't that the beauty of it?

we lose a bit of ourselves
to make something whole

i can’t always tell  
where i end and the ink begins. 
maybe that’s why the writing  
feels like a wound  
half-closed,  
still bleeding even after  
the pen’s run dry.

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