Story in Ink

My hands are always stained with ink.

I wrote two books. A red one and a blue one.

The red book is only filled halfway, and it contains my happy, untainted memories. Seeing my newborn child, getting married.

The blue book is overflowing, and I've ended up continuing it in a second blue book. It contains depressing, frustrating, upsetting mistakes. Things I would have done over and over again if I could. Funerals, accidents, unsaid phrases, people I never saw again.

These books are the trilogy to my life.

Each time I make another mistake, like hurting someone again, I reread the entire blue book. When I finally reach the last page, I feel relieved, like a burden lifted off my shoulders, until I scribble down my newest petty event in my upsetting story.

Each time I finally do something right, like making someone's day a little better, I reread the entire red book. It never lasts as long as the blue one, and that's not only because of the less, yet still countless, number of the pages. At the end, I write down my small achievement in this huge hill of regret and buried secrets that I stand on.

I've read them so many times. I remember each word, where my tears ran through the ink, where my coffee made stains in the paper when I burst out laughing. It's my punishment and my reward.

In the fall, I would read the red book the most. The crimson leaves falling off the tired branches would make me hotblooded. It made me a child again, an innocent clueless infant. I would compliment people on the street, I would make children laugh, and it made my life a little more worth living.

In the winter, I never read any book. My feet would be stuck in the snow, and I barely ever went out to do anything. My life became sluggish, slow. It was the small time I had to forget everything, before the real storm came.

When spring came, my mood didn't lift like other's did. Spring was the time that most of my tragedies had happened. I lived a small sad life in the corner of my house, reading the books over and over, trying to find what I had done wrong. My answers were there of course, but it did nothing. I was not satisfied with anything.

Summer. Full of the ghosts of small smiles, little feet in sandals, plaid dresses hanging on small shoulders.  It was the time when I had to deal with the aftermath of everything. While people laughed, spent every waking second living out their lives, I would read my cursed blue book. I did nothing wrong, yet it was to punish myself ten times over for the stupid mistakes I still suffered for.

My life is a story in ink.