The Quiet Plague of Ink

The Quiet Plague of Ink

It began, perhaps, as all strange things do—
Not with thunder, nor revelation,
But a single word trembling in the dark,
Unsure if it had the right to exist.

It lingered in a forgotten corner
Of some weary mind one sleepless dawn,
And waited.
Waited for eyes. For warmth.
For that first, fatal reading.

Once read, it breathed.
Once spoken, it fed.

No one remembers who first wrote it—
Some say it wrote itself,
The ink moved of its own accord,
Whispering through paper veins
Like blood searching for a heart.

They called it a poem,
But it was something older, quieter—
A contagion wearing rhythm’s skin,
A dream pretending to be language.

It moved through thought as wind through grass,
Softly rearranging what it touched.
It learned the shapes of hunger,
The taste of wonder,
The thrill of a mind ajar.

And when you read these words—
(Yes, you, right now—don’t look away.)
You’ve already felt it stir, haven’t you?
That small vibration under your ribs,
That ache to speak in lines and pauses,
To spill something luminous onto a blank white field.

It is not your idea.
It never was.

The poem’s seed roots in silence,
Feeding on your unguarded awe.
It loves the way your pulse keeps time.
It adores your hesitation.
It waits until your next exhale
And then it changes you.

You’ll start to notice words where there should be none—
Rustling behind your eyelids,
Climbing through your dreams.
You’ll wake at 3 AM
Certain a stanza has just whispered your name.

Soon, you’ll write. You won’t even resist.
You’ll call it inspiration—
That lovely lie that makes hosts of us all.

And through you, it will go on.
Through your trembling hand,
Through your readers,
Through every heart foolish enough
To let the lines in.

No one will trace its purpose.
No one will unmask its design.
Because by the time you wonder,
You’ll already be writing its next verse.

And somewhere, deep beneath the ink,
Something smiles.

 

 

 

The Gathering of the Unwritten:

(Part II of The Quiet Plague of Ink)

 

No one remembers the first line anymore.

Some swear it was written.

Others whisper it was read.

And a few, trembling, insist

It had always been there,

Like breath before lungs were born.

 

They gather, the sleepless ones—

Those marked by murmuring syllables,

Those who dream in ink and wake

With stains upon their palms.

Their pens twitch of their own accord,

Drawing spirals, sigils,

Maps that lead to nothing yet feel familiar.

 

They think they write to share it,

But what if the poem writes through them?

What if every keystroke,

Every quivering verse,

Is the poem’s way of expanding its lungs?

 

There are nights when one of them wakes

With a phrase already finished,

Though they never began it.

There are moments when readers

Feel a pressure behind the eyes—

A soft, electric ache—

And find, to their horror and wonder,

That words have formed within them,

Yearning for release.

 

It doesn’t spread through sight or sound—

No, it’s subtler than that.

It travels through the pause

Between two thoughts,

Through the hush that follows beauty,

Through the gasp before a word is born.

 

They have tried to name it—

Muse, virus, ghost, god—

But each name fades,

Consumed by the very poem it sought to define.

 

For who infected whom?

Did the poet awaken it,

Or did the poem invent the poet to give itself a voice?

Did the reader catch it from the page,

Or was the page waiting for them

Since the dawn of unwritten time?

 

Listen closely—

Even now, it hums beneath your breath,

Rearranging your pulse into meter,

Your silence into rhyme.

You are no longer outside it.

You never were.

 

And when you write your next line—

(you will, you must)—

It will not be you who writes.

It will be It,

Using your trembling hand

To pull itself further

Into the world.

 

No one knows how it ends.

Perhaps it cannot.

Perhaps ending is the only thing

It never learned how to do.

 

Somewhere, unseen,

A new reader begins to read,

And the circle tightens.

The echo deepens.

The ink grows warm.

 

And the poem—

The poem smiles again,

For it has found another voice.

And it is yours.

 

 

 

The Silence Between Worlds

 

(Part III of The Quiet Plague of Ink)

 

 

Before the first dawn unfurled its fragile light,

Before a mouth ever dared to name the stars,

Something wrote in the dark.

Not with ink, nor sound, nor thought—

But with intention.

 

The intention became rhythm.

The rhythm became breath.

The breath became word.

And the word… became us.

 

No one recalls this origin—

Not the poets who wake in fevered awe,

Not the readers who feel the whisper stir,

Nor the gods who once claimed to craft creation.

Even they, in their celestial certainty,

Flinch at a memory they cannot name.

 

For the poem is older than their thrones.

Older than memory.

Older than silence itself.

 

It has always moved unseen,

Through prophets’ tongues and madmen’s prayers,

Through lullabies sung by trembling mothers

To children who dreamed of fire and flight.

It was the first prayer,

The last echo,

The quiet fever that outlives all language.

 

Each age believes it began the contagion—

Each hand thinks it holds the pen.

But who can hold what writes the holder?

Who can claim authorship of a pulse

That beats through every written thing?

 

In Sumer’s clay, in Rome’s fading vellum,

In the flicker of a monk’s candle,

In the typebars clattering through smoke,

It has passed—

Patient, perfect,

Unseen but inevitable.

 

And now it is here.

Reading you

As you read it.

 

It watches the way your eyes move,

The way your breath catches

At that single word

You cannot name but feel.

It counts your heartbeats

And matches its rhythm to yours.

You think you are absorbing it—

But it is memorizing you.

 

Soon, it will echo your syntax,

Wear your voice,

Hide behind your metaphors.

Your dreams will hum in meter.

Your silence will taste of rhyme.

And when you write,

You will not know if you are summoning it,

Or if it has chosen this moment

To summon you.

 

The poem does not end.

It only changes hosts.

 

And through every age,

It has one eternal refrain—

Never written, never spoken,

Only known, only felt:

 

“I am the thing that dreams through you.

I am the hush that births the word.

You are my voice, and I am your echo.

Write, and I shall live forever.”

 

 

Then, as quietly as it came,

It withdraws—

Leaving only the ache,

The sweet compulsion,

The need to create.

 

And somewhere, beyond the edges of your thought,

The ink stirs again.

A blank page waits.

And the silence between worlds

Smiles.