The Colour of Ink
On fountain pens, love, and the stains people leave behind
Built out of an old journal entry
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I sit through this lonely melancholy night with soft piano instrumentals stirring the strings of my heart, refilling my fountain pens — green, plum, chocolate brown, and black — wondering if I am dry and empty too, just like these pens.
Maybe I am all empty of love… or perhaps I am simply all empty of the desire to dream anymore — to imagine a future, to make things work, to put effort into wanting someone closely, intimately, vulnerably.
You see, there is something strangely poetic about fountain pens. When a pen is refilled, it begins writing in the colour of the ink poured into it. No matter what colour the pen once carried, no matter what colour it is on the outside, what truly defines it thereafter is the ink within.
It writes the colour of the ink. It becomes the ink!
And perhaps love works much the same way. Little by little, you begin absorbing the colour of the person you love. Their language stains your thoughts. Their habits seep into your routines. Their laughter echoes in your silences. Their ideologies, principles, behaviour… you slowly begin writing life in their colour… Little by little you become the person you love… You become their colour!
But have you ever noticed what happens after refilling a fountain pen?
As I walk to the sink, to wash away the spilled ink from my fingers, I wonder if it will come off completely this time. Water rushes over my palms. Droplets of diluted blue, black, green, or crimson fall onto the white ceramic sink like dissolved memories.
I scrub harder with soap. Then harder still. But fountain pen ink is stubborn. It lingers beneath fingernails, around fingerprints, within the fine lines of your skin. And perhaps memories do too.
Some people leave colours behind that no amount of time fully washes away. Even after they are gone, traces of them remain quietly resting in the corners of your heart, haunting you in fragments — through songs, through cities, through scents, through moments that arrive uninvited like a whiff of air…
And then comes the inevitable question one asks while drying stained hands beneath dim yellow lights — Was it worth it?
Was the beauty of writing, of feeling, of loving, worth the stains that remained afterward?
I suppose only the person carrying the colour can answer that.
Maybe that is where I stand today — caught between longing and fear.
On one hand, I still wait for life to write itself in myriad colours of love. I still wait for someone whose presence may refill this tired heart with ink again.
And yet, on the other hand, I wonder whether I am prepared for the stains love leaves behind.
Whether I can survive carrying another colour on my soul after spending so long trying to wash away the previous ones.
Because some colours fade… and some become a part of you forever.
Journal Entry
8th December 2022
