The Journal That I Keep

Between the cardboard covers there is paper and there is ink. There are smudges, doodles, coffee stains, and black scribbles marking mistakes. There is the occasional legible word. There are black, white, the occasional blue, sometimes red, but never pink.

There are no confessions, no revelations, no confidences, no revolutions, no contemplations and no resignations.

There are stops.

In paper and ink there are invisible clasps on vocal chords and figurative fingers around necks, there are the shakes and palpitations and the feelings of dizziness, and there are little red stains on the edges of unsexy cotton panties. There are rolls of fat that never resist to pinching hands.

There are everyone’s eyes except for those that belong to the person holding the pen.

Between the cardboard covers there are the hearts you have lived and melted and lifted and broken and there are stories you have heard before, millions of trillions of times from forever until eternity since before electric stoves and mascara were invented, before estrogen and ovaries were discovered, before voting was even an option because democracy did not yet exist.

Yet these stories told in ink and paper did.

If it is something new that you seek, there is nothing worth reading. Nothing is original in the journal that I keep.