Aye, the nib doth part the flesh of the page,
slow as a thief in a sepulchre’s shade—
not with haste, nay, nor with the clatter
of some dullard’s hammer, but with the whisper
of a blade parting silk.

Here, in this parlour of shadows,
where the candle gutters like a dying saint,
I spill not ink but the slow ichor of thought,
black as a widow’s lace, thick as confession
unfurled in the hush of the confessional.

The parchment, ah!—it trembles,
not with fear, but with the quiver of a bride
undone by her own yielding.
Each stroke, a pulse; each word, a wound
that blooms like bruise-me-nots at dusk.

We are two ghosts haunting the same script,
the quill and I—bound in this unholy sacrament.
And when at last the page is spent,
we shall fold ourselves into the dark,
sated, ruined, perfectly undone.