Blue Ink Ants

They left the room. I didn't see them, but I knew they were there and then gone.

They left me a blue pen and one piece of paper. I opened the pen and pressed the tip to my fingers, the blue ink spreads like the red ink in my veins does when they cut me open. It's been so long like this, ten times dark and shadows and more, I lost count after a while. And I wonder if the next breath will bring something new. There are endless possibilities outside window they say - who ever they are - But I am here behind these walls, with only my small window for light.

I lift the pen from my fingers and press it to my wrist. If I hold it just right it makes pretty drop shapes and runs like ants down my arm. I lift my arm and turn it so blue ant drops can make paths all the way as far down my body as I can make it until it plops, splat, dead on the floor. Never mind, I lift the pen to make another ant drop somewhere else, making criss-crossing paths and many dead ant drops around me on the floor until there is no more pen blue ant drops and the window is dark.

If I lie still and breathe silently I can hear other things beyond the wall hum and hiss. I feel more then I hear though, vibrations while I lie on the floor, the scurry of blue ant drops as they slide away under and outside my window. What is outside? Why do shadows slide across the window? Sometimes they linger making tap tapping, any noise apart from the hum is not unwelcome. But they make the thing in my chest move and shift, and I jump up to the window, too late. I can't reach anything anyway, so what does it matter that I even try, but I sometimes see faded blue ink outside so I jump and jump.

Apart from that, all there is, is sleep, blue pen, one sheet of paper and time for more blue ant drops to run on my skin. There are no words on the paper. I write on my body (between the ant trails), I draw stories on top of stories, they get smeared and faded over time, but I can remember each one of them. Every bit of space that I can reach is criss-crossed blue. In some places, so heavy that once dried, it flakes off leaving bare patches like when you pull bark from a tree. I have wrapped myself in a bark of blue ink and stories. Only my back, the place I cannot reach to write, is free from the stories. But not free from the ink ants and their trails or from the scratching of my blue fingers. I drag them across my back so my skin becomes bark. The only story my spine tells is one of pain, I don't need to write it to know.

I've never seen a tree, but I know they exist. They walk outside my window, I think the trees are the ones that cast the moving shadows and the tap tap tapping at the edge of my hearing. The trees have branches like mine (though made were made by the blue ant drops). I dream that one day they will reach themselves through the window and wrap me in twigs and leaves and bark. I think it is called an embrace. The animal in my chest shifts when I think about this, it gets restless and runs. It runs and runs so fast that I have to breathe fast to keep up, it runs and runs but always stays inside me, I don't know where it is trying to run to. If I could, I would reach inside and eat it to make it stop all the run running. This useless creature inside me, I think it has long branches as well because after run running it reaches down in my chest squeezes out my air. I gasp and the room spins, then the floor pulls me down and I sleep.

They came and took my pen, they would have taken the paper as well, but I ate it. The paper is inside me now so now I can fill it with blue ant branches, and memories of the tree fingers.  I can tell the stories to my chest animal, I tell it stories to make it quiet and stop its run running. It gets so scared because there are no more blue ant drops and because more and more bark comes off my skin and when that happens there will be no more stories. So it run runs and reaches down with branch fingers and squeezes out my air.

Before they took my pen away,  I was running out of body paper so I had written stories on the bottoms of my feet, they were so blue blue that I could print walk them across the floor and the walls like I was running up the walls to the window to look out. I cant jump anymore, my chest animal wont let me, I'm stuck on the floor with the dead ant drops and my bark peeling bit by bit. Soon there will be no more blue and I will be new again with fresh space for write dreaming and ant drops. The trees walk past the window, more light and shadows than I can count. I have forgotten all my stories.

Today they left me a green pen.