The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I do not leave blood behind when I hurt.
I leave paragraphs.

I have washed my hands a thousand times,
but the ink never leaves.

It settles into the creases of my fingers,
lives beneath my nails,
presses into the pads of my palms
like memory that refuses to fade.

Some people scream.
Some people break things.
I sit quietly and ruin paper.

Every ache becomes a sentence.
Every longing, a line break.
Every betrayal, a page I cannot throw away.

You could trace my life
not by dates or photographs
but by the stains left behind
on margins and torn corners.

I have bled in notebooks
no one ever saw.
I have healed in drafts
no one will ever read.

The ink knows things about me
no one else does.

It has held the weight of unsaid words,
caught the moments I could not carry alone,
absorbed what I did not dare let spill into the world.

And still it stays,
pressed into the lines of my skin,
quiet and permanent.

It never fades.
It never lets me forget.