Inky Excuse

I felt like I was being watched. 

I felt like I was being watched so I got off my bed and slowly walked around my room.  No one there.  So I stood still, twirling my pencil in my hand and and trying to stare the source of the feeling into existence. 

With the feeling only slightly pushed away, I sat back on the bed, my pencil going back to the numbers and signs that just didn't register in my mind.  That was when I heard it.

A tiny sound, a sad sound, something small and innocent.  But something about it scared the numbers from my head and the pencil from my hand.  I crossed the room to the source of the cry.  It came from the desk, but nothing there could have made it.  I decided it was all in my head and tried to call the numbers back.  And as I turned, the voice came back. 

"Just going to leave me here all month, are you?" it said.

"What?" Where was it coming from?  The only thing in that direction was a slender black pen resting on a yellow-paged notebook.   I slowly inched closer and let the tip of my finger touch the smooth shell of the pen. 

"That's the first time you've touched me in a month," it said.  Did it really say that?  I didn't know that pens could talk.  But something made me respond.

"I-I've been busy.  I don't have time to-,"

"Don't have time for me?  But you have time for those obnoxious pencils.  I thought you knew better.  Pencils hold you back.  Pens are the only things that make you take risks, make you unafraid.  We used to do a lot together, you know."  It was right.  I thought back on the times I used the pen to write a story or a poem or whatever it was in my mind that was screaming to get out.  It was a release, and I missed it. 

"I know," I sighed.  "And you're right."  I picked up the pen and the paper.  Both felt warm in my hands, felt right.  I curled up in the window, clicked the pen, and let it take over.  And it felt perfect.  The pen was like a bridge for everything that had been clogging my mind to escape by, to be captured on paper and to settle into it's warm fibers.  But that moment wasn't just for me.  It was for both of us.  To really live, the pen needed to bleed.