Three Pens

There is a yellow fountain pen that lives on my desk. A Sailor. I bought it in an airport. Saw the colour. Felt the nib. That was that.

No deliberation. Just recognition.

I use it only for my journal. Which means I use it only for myself.

A few times a month I take it to the balcony. Something has to build up first. A residue of living that needs a different kind of attention.

I uncap it, and this matters. The uncapping, the small ceremony of it, and I write.

Not for anyone. Not toward anything.

A fountain pen cannot be hurried. Press too hard and it bleeds. Rush and it skips. It only works when you slow down to meet it.

I have been writing with fountain pens long enough to know that this is not a metaphor. And also that it completely is.

I have a different pen for work. Functional, reliable, unsentimental. It gets things done. Signs documents. Makes lists. Gives the world what it needs from me.

And a third — a calligraphy pen, slightly theatrical, with a nib that turns ordinary letters into something that wants to be looked at.

Three pens. Three different hands reaching for three different selves.

I didn't decide this. It decided itself. The way most true things happen — slowly, without announcement, until this evening when I noticed it has always been so.

The yellow pen knows things about me that the other two don't. I would never write my journal with the calligraphy pen.

Something in me understands the difference, even when I don't.