Ink Stains Your Hands like Truth
Divining in your ink well during a hell storm.
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
I imagine staring into an inkwell is the original glaring at a blank document screen. Something about it feels perpetually like it’s 5:30am and you’re finishing an essay when you should be sleeping.
Reflective surfaces are dangerous, just ask Narcissus. A black phone screen, a puddle on the street, the broken glass on the sidewalk, messages tend to trickle in whether I’m asking or not.
Which is why I’m staring into a dish of ink, hoping some sort of hope will slither out. Hope can’t be bold and brassy like she wants to be. She’s under cover of darkness, now.
I want the ink to tell me something true as I pour it out in the teacup saucer. I’d kill for something that is good. I’d kill for something other than the damp grief of a blank slate.
I have a practice where I divine as much as I can from the ink, and then use it to write what I hope happens. My favorite ink to use is by Thomas Little of A Rural Pen, who makes ink out of dissolved firearms. I was lucky enough to interview Thomas for Autostraddle, and their ink feels related to what I’m considering at all times. The color is a rusted red, like blood that’s started to dry.
I cannot turn off my brain enough to interpret anything. Everything is a deadline that is rapidly passing.
I make a list of all of the things I want to do for other people this week. Send a package to my grieving sister, write a letter to my sick aunt, make some cookies for my building, and reevaluate my budget for some aid donations. Bake bread, write words down, and support bail funds. Clean surfaces for my sister’s visit and wave to my neighbors as I pass by.
Mend, cook, bake, and do magic. Be friendly. Be consistent.
Fold it up in your pocket and keep it on you like a government document. That’s the title to your humanity on that paper.
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Find me by sending a crow to the only streetlight in the smallest town you've ever heard of.
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