The Diary...

In searching for something else she suspected of being buried among those old cardboard moving boxes in the corner of her master closet, she came across the red plastic diary that had been her closest confidant when she was 14. She had forgotten it was there, or anywhere, for that matter.

All morning, transfixed, she relived the moments, bouncing back and forth in her 14-year-old hormonally driven race car body that zig-zagged from elation to desperation and back again, a little surprised now by her own naiveté. Halfway through, the pages pulled her in close, whispering back her own soliloquy, overwhelming her again, even now, twenty years later. Nicholas, sweet Nicky. Reading her own secrets, remembrances, took her back to that perfect night when they had stayed out until morning, lost in each other on the bandstand at Mindowaskin Park. Dancing on the worn wooden floor, his boom box singing their favorite songs, cuddling up against the cold, together in his brothers sleeping bag.

She held the memories up close, smelling the faint scent of the Tommy Girl perfume he had so eagerly presented on her 15th birthday. She had used it like an aspergillum, blessing the most private and holy revelations in her little red book. 

Briefly covering her embarrassment, memories that had been too personal to share, even with her diary, she paused with her head buried in the ancient scent of gifted perfume and for a brief moment, felt Nicky's arms around her, wrapped together in an older brother’s torn sleeping bag.

Linda Christensen, artist