The ink comes in a small glass jar with a black lid, and it sloshes pleasantly when the jar is tilted back and forth.  The ink itself smells like earth, like ash, like the world’s patient breath.

Today you have brought a scroll of paper thick and pale, whose fibers swirl this way and that.  You paint persimmons on a broken branch, ripe and round.  The ink is richly black, but so are many other inks.  As the persimmons take shape–each one defined by one or two quick, curving brushstrokes–the air becomes heavy with their fragrance.

The effect only lasts until the ink dries, but then, you can always paint another painting.  Perhaps tomorrow it will be peaches, or maples swept sideways by the mountain wind, or a cup of tea brewed to the color of meadow honey.

for Vom Marlowe