If we ever have a fire
my heart will be lost
I’ve written it down in at least 20 notebooks
1-subject, 3-subject, 100 pages after SE Asian History

These notebooks are more powerful
than my journals, I never kept
when I started writing in journals, I thought some great historian or biographer would need the details to tell the story of my life. That was when I thought, someday, my story would be one to tell.

Three years ago, I brought buckets of books, paper, memories, to the new life I created. There wasn’t room to store all of it. His small things were already in the margins of the closets I hurriedly cluttered.

For posterity’s sake, I thought I could digitize my notebooks, place verses in type-faces and faux books, to scroll through, rather than turn and squint. I barely completed Notebook Blue.

The next summer, I went through my memories, tore poems from between pages of death and depression, pictures of heartache that still felt like yesterday. We were moving, and the moving truck was small, space in my heart was limited.

Journals are heavy, bulky memories. I saved the poems, and I keep the notebooks that hold them.