What the Sharpie Learned About Hope
I was a good marker once. Premium felt tip, fine point, permanent ink in Classic Black. I lived in the kitchen junk drawer next to the dead batteries and the instruction manual for the air fryer nobody uses. That was fine. That was my life.
Then the child found me.
She was four then, maybe five. Time moves differently when you're a marker in a house. She pulled me out during the chaos of a Thursday afternoon when BW was handling something in the garage and I was in the living room pretending to check oil levels on the Civic. The child had that look. The one that says she has discovered something and that discovery will have consequences for everyone involved.
"Daddy," she said, holding me up. "Is this washable?"
I should have answered. Should have said no immediately. Should have done literally anything but let her interpret my silence as permission.
She walked to the wall. The wall that separates the living room from the hallway. The wall that BW had painted a careful eggshell white six months prior. The child uncapped me—the sound was like a tiny gunshot—and drew a line. Just one. Testing it out. Seeing if the magic worked.
It did.
What followed was a mural. Not artistic, you understand. Not a child's genuine creative expression suitable for Instagram. This was industrial. Methodical. The child treated me like a construction tool. Horizontal lines. Vertical lines. Some kind of grid that made sense only to her. She drew for four minutes straight.
When BW came inside, she didn't yell. That was somehow worse. (She never yells. She just stops moving for a moment, which is more effective than any volume could be.)
"Was that washable?" BW asked me. Not the child. Me. Like I had made a choice.
"No," I said. Though I wasn't speaking by then. I was just an object. An accomplice.
BW got Magic Erasers. The child watched. I got scrubbed partially away—some of me remains, a faint ghost grid that catches the light wrong on certain afternoons. The child cried. I got confiscated and placed on top of the refrigerator next to the scissors with the broken handle and the good tape that BW doesn't let anyone use.
That was three years ago.
I am still here. The child is seven now and doesn't remember me. She asks for markers sometimes and BW says no without explaining why. I watch the kitchen from my exile, cap still on, permanent ink still permanent. Ready. Still hoping she doesn't remember how to climb.