Twenty-One Diaries

In an Athens store, full of incense
and Buddhas, I bought another
blank book, thick with soft paper

dotted by chips of bark, woven
in Balinese banana rope, bound by
Sumatran hands. The writing box

in the corner of my loft already at
capacity, empties outnumbering filled.
She never collected empties,

her mother confides, as she puts away
the left-over graduation pie. She wrote
in them until used up, one after another,

every year, squirreling them away in her
closet, until twenty fill a plastic tub.
They remain in Georgia, under a bed.

My moleskin begins on Turtle Cove Lane,
during months spent closing the New York
house, its well-fed end in sight.