It's a Beautiful Desk, But It's Not Home
A Pen & Paper Story
“Sorry, ”the Bic pen tells the Copy Paper.
Bic is a 1.6 mm beautiful violet, but she can’t see her own beauty.
Ain’t that the way?
She can’t let go of the rips she makes.
“I don’t like the way things are,” She continues. Bic longs to have fancy French ink like Faber-Castell.
It’s dusk, and the smooth maple desktop is too cold.
“But that’s the way they are,” Copy Paper says.
He knows the pain of not being archival. Not 100% cotton. He’s thin, yellowing and tears easily with a dog-eared corner.
He fears the crease is permanent.
“Hey, would you look at that?” Paper says.
Paper has always loved how Bic scratches his belly with her fine tip. He never minds an occasional rip. Truth be told, he finds it exciting.
But Bic has always been unforgiving of her own marks.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bic says.
She’s shocked by her accidental dribble turning out so lovely. Yet again, she never believed her Dollar Store upbringing would land her on such a stunning desk.
”It reminds me of something, though,” Paper says.
He’s thinking back to when he was newly purchased, still tightly wrapped in cellophane, in the middle of a stack of 500.
He thinks about how difficult it is to be the middle sheet. Watching your siblings get used, never knowing if they will be treasured, saved, or crumpled and tossed.
“Do you remember the house at the end of Silk Street?” Paper asks.
The desk lamp spotlights Bic’s masterpiece of an ink dot. It looks like an abstract purple tulip.
Paper believes Bic is a true artist. An artist with a shiny, sexy, pointy cap that makes his wood pulp salute.
“Yeah,” Bic says.
They would sit for hours in the upstairs room of the house on Silk Street. Right under a window that was always open to the garden of tulips.
Until the human died, then they were brought here.
“Why?” Bic asks.
She feels restless. Worried. She never knows when she’s running out of ink. Would Paper even give her the time of day, then? She’s afraid of being no longer useful.
She misses the others from her pack. Maybe some are still home, at their house on Silk Street. Maybe they’re waiting for her return.
“No reason,” Paper says.
The protruding fiber on his bottom left makes him feel self-conscious. He hopes that Bic hasn’t noticed it.
Paper fears that something un-save-worthy will be written upon him, and he will be sent to the shredder.
Will Bic still love him if he is in pieces?
The house on Silk Street didn’t have a shredder.
“Maybe we’d better just both go home,” Paper says.
