No one ever told me that journals
don’t need to be read; my dad read his
all the time and
I always felt so helplessly naive
in the face of everything that was.

But actually, like a poem, like a cliff face
against ocean, journals summon their magic
from the sweet bite of potential—
the face of what they maybe meant
beneath the words.

I don’t have to remember my foolish love
for foolishness; rather, I can remember
his eyes, their silent gaze like the ocean
as if my very heart itself
were a cliff exposed…