The Ink

The Ink

Ink sat inside a bottle,
As quiet as a lie,
Until the clock struck midnight,
And darkness opened one eye.

It squeezed beneath the silver lid,
On forty little feet,
Then dipped itself inside my thoughts,
And wrote them on the sheet.

It wrote my name all backwards,
Then laughed without a sound,
My mirror quite forgot my face,
And turned itself around.

It made my little dog a king,
It made the armchairs bow,
It gave the kettle golden teeth,
And taught it how to growl.

It coloured in the pale white moon,
Then scribbled out the stars,
It drew a ladder through the roof,
And climbed the chimney bars.

I chased it with a cleaning cloth,
It wrote, “Do not come near,”
Then locked me in a sentence,
Between a scream and fear.

I begged the ink to set me free,
It drew a paper key,
But when I tried to pick it up,
It drew a lock on me.

At dawn the room fell silent,
The walls were clean and white,
The ink was in its bottle,
The lid was fastened tight.

I thought it all a nightmare,
Until I saw my skin,
Ten thousand words were moving,
And pulling me within.

The bottle still sits on my desk,
But I have gone away,
For ink became the writer,
And I became the page.