I Am THE Pen

• Catherine Lamont, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2012

The pen is mightier than the sword.

I should know. I am, after all, a pen.

A sword has only one way; to destroy. But words, oh words can do so much more! Words can raze empires to the ground and build new ones in their place. Words can lift a broken soul to the highest of heights! Words can bring kings to power and subjects to their knees. With the right words, in the right place, worlds can crumble around your feet and stars can fall into your hands.

And who's the lucky son of a gun who gets to spell out these intoxicating beings? You got it, Edward the ball point pen. That's me folks!

I love the warm, fond embrace of a human hand as it wraps around me. I love the thrill that shoots through my ink as I am lifted and pressed to the paper. Sending thoughts into my humans' head, offering suggestions and fixing their spelling. I love seeing my ink run across the paper, one line after the another. Warm black ink, the ink of worlds, my ink, spelling out stories that may one day send jets of adrenaline through the bodies of human readers.

I remember a time not so long ago when my pet human used me to pen his most famous piece of literature. Have you heard of Romeo and Juliet? Yes, I penned that tragically beautiful play. My human, a man named William Shakespeare, was a wonderful gent. I was a young pen back then, still only a quill! With plain white and brown feathery plumage.

Oh to be a pen in 1913! Every author had in his mind and on his fingertips the tale of the Titanic Tragedy. I was actually used by a young lady aboard the ship at the time to write her diary. To this day I have burned in my jet black heart her recount of the sad journey. “That night has left a crater in my heart. I will never forget my father's face as he slipped from my life and into Gods' hands.”

I am still haunted by that sentence. I tell that young lady's story to anyone I meet. It touches even the hardest of hearts.

Tell me, have you ever known glory? Have you ever felt it? Perhaps when you stood atop Mount Everest? Or when you won a medal at the Olympics? Or maybe you have felt glory in a personal goal? For me, glory is writing. Glory is being the scribe of human hearts, minds and imaginations. Glory is freedom, and freedom is life. I am glorious, I am free and I'm alive!

To you, I am just a pen. A writing implement bought at the local supermarket for .80c. But once you get to know me, once you use me, once you let the torrent of words and reams of creativity flow from your mind and onto paper through me, I am so much more than just a pen.

I am the world. Your world. And every world lurking inside your head. I am life and death, happiness and grief, machine and flesh. I am malleable putty in your hands, feeding you grammar and spelling and occasionally ideas. I reel off long, complicated sentences, giving details and lovey dovey mushy stuff. But sometimes, it is the smaller sentences, the simpler ones that feel more romantic.

Every love story, every war memoir, every biography and thriller novel, I have fathered them all. Dickens, Chaucer, Austen, Bronte, Stowe, Smith, Carmody. All of them, I have given dry, inky life to. I have written innumerable assignments and maths equations. I am the proud bearer of every word, sentence, paragraph and page.

So you see, the pen really is mightier than the sword.