Your pen is coffin-black,

a casket for your dried ink

which clotted into the thread,

crackles when I turn

the torpedo lid.

The nib

beaten gold,

picked bone clean

by the air,

those mean years.

Rolling up my sleeves

I stand over a basin

and with surgeon’s fingers

sluice the pen.

The water runs black

and blue, and empties

to nothing.

A vein collapses,

gobbing the water

black again

then it pales,

and all your words

have gone.