a fountain pen is just a fountain pen except when it lies bleeding until the ink runs over the edges of the page and drips onto the floor like that Halloween Eve when i gashed open my left thumb and i saw as if in slow motion a trickle of bright red crashed into the floor and converged at the crossroads made of shallow trenches in between the white tiles the fountain pen chisels into the soft notebook page makes hazy memories tangible the ceramic blade with its impeccably smooth edge carved out a lopsided creepy smile and hollowed out the innards of that stumpy pumpkin i bought at ShopRite with the cold precision of a well-trained executioner desensitized to violence because the job description said there would be a lot of bloodshed my fountain pen that quietly bleeds itself into a crimson stream of meandering veins i want to wrap my fingers around you like the Band-Aid that hugged my left thumb one Halloween Eve and pushed back the red pulsing tide
Nina Huang Washington University in St. Louis, ’22
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