We write black. We also write all kinds of other colors, but they look black just the same.
At night I wait in the dark on her desk. When it is quiet and cold. Behind me the computer and printer rest in silence. I remember the last word we wrote last night: call. The kitchen is next to her office and the connecting door is always open, so that it doesn’t get stuffy here during the daytime. As a result, I can hear the hollow plastic kitchen clock ticking away the seconds, louder than during the day. A lonely car rubbers through the puddles on the cobblestones in front of the house. And like every night I lie here waiting patiently.
When the new day has started, the sun returns her colors to the world and the central heating has caught back on, the house breathes life again. I am now clearly visible, I gleam in the daylight. Two-thirds of me is stately black, but the bottom part transparent, so she can see how much ink we have left. I have a clip, that she never uses. After all, she always lays me down, because that’s better for my durability. The little button with which she will click my point outwards is also transparent and thank goodness has not been chewed on. I have to wait a little longer, first she dedicates herself to her morning rituals.
Then comes the moment I’ve been eagerly awaiting. Tenderly she picks me up with her warm right hand and clasps me firmly between her index finger, middle finger and thumb. Now we are that strong team again. We write fluent characters and words, lots of words. Sometimes fast and somewhat sloppy, other times thoughtful and easier to read. Sometimes we are unstoppable, we keep spewing words, sentences, blocks of text, even entire stories. This glorious work is what I was made for, this sublime partnership.
Together we make notes, we schedule appointments, we solve sudokus. We write and strike through, write more, delete again, until our poems and stories sound the way we wanted them to sound, yet different. Sometimes we are less strict and we hang on to everything. We fill dummies with her thoughts, with what she has to say and with what she can hardly put into words. We tuttuttut about our spelling errors and about those words that were just not what she meant to say. And at the end of the day she puts me down. I sigh with satisfaction; I know that I am indispensable.