I Wrote This Instead of Screaming

I am but a humble scrivener, of ink and vellum born,
I tend the wills of gentlemen - their fortunes and their scorn.
The stacks are cold and airless, where the candle’s seldom lit,
And ghosts of ink and parchment whisper, “mind the words you’ve writ.”

They speak of pale Annabel, a clerk of modest wage,
Who vanished from her station here, a thirty-year-old page.
The coroner declared her “fled,” the magistrate agreed,
Yet dust and rumor linger still, and floorboards softly bleed.

Oh, the ink - it never truly dries, it only waits to speak,
It binds the dead to ledger lines, their silence frail and weak.
Oh, the ink - it never truly dries, it only waits to tell,
Of all the sins we try to hide, and holds them in its spell.

One eve, by gaslight’s weary glare, I glimpsed her shadowed frame,
She pointed where the folios slept beneath a borrowed name.
The “Landed Claims of ’92,” a tome both black and blue,
Its spine was stitched with silver thread, its pages torn askew.

Her master was a barrister of powdered pride and gold,
Who’d forged the will of noble birth, and stolen what it sold.
When Annabel uncovered him, her conscience dared to speak,
He silenced her with poisoned tea, and cast her to the creek.

Oh, the ink - it never truly dries, it only waits to speak,
It stains the soul that penned the lie, and leaves it wan and weak.
Oh, the ink - it never truly dries, it only waits to tell,
Of all the graves we build from words that sleep beneath the quill.

I found him in his parlor, fat and famed and old,
He raised his glass and asked my name - I said, “The one foretold."
I read aloud her testament, each forged and damning line,
And watched his face turn chalk and ash beneath his claret wine.

I called no constable that night, nor sought the hangman’s fee,
The papers spoke by morning, and the city’s tongues ran free.
His name undone, his fortune fled, his portrait torn apart,
And still I file the evidence with trembling, ink-stained heart.

Oh, the ink - it never truly dries, it whispers through the years,
It carries grief and righteousness in equal parts and tears.
Oh, the ink - it never truly dries, I feel it in my veins,
For I have freed poor Annabel, but lost what soul remains.

The stacks are cold and airless still,
But dust no longer weeps.
I hear no voice but turning page,
and that is how she sleeps.