I am an open journal.
With a lock long lost.
My pages, riddled with ink,
Lay exposed.
Wandering eyes waver from page to page.
Taking in the tales of lost loves.
Cheering for the stories of triumph.
Learning from listed lessons.
Come all who wish to witness,
Stories of me.
Stories we wrote.

A cover so unassuming.
How to even judge,
Something with so little to show for.
Title-less, addressed to no one.
The grooves and creases,
Spread across the binding.
Worn.
Lived.
Better days,
A distant memory.
Be gentler than those who payed no mind.

Pages that lay uneven.
Torn asunder,
Blacked out or burned
Many, left untouched. 
In places, the ink
has bled through.
Some made to be beautiful.
Others, defiled.
These pages, all precious.
Even the pages
I'd like to forget.

Sable seas of ink,
Flow onto parchment.
Bringing life to desolate pages.
With it
The tellings that brought this book to you.
The lies.
The hurt.
The truth.
The remedy.
A reminder to be weary of people,
The exalted who hold the pen above you.

There will come a time
When this book is shut,
Shelved for the last time.
Yet, these stories can drift on the wind.
From lips to ears.
From old to young.
The life I lived.
The Stories,
We wrote them.
My world within paper.
Am I the book, or the stories that began on those pages.

Replace the memories with post-it notes.
Re-write the history that created who I am
those paragraphs of information erased from my thoughts.
I will save myself
sew and stitch my own flesh
and paint my bones
Creating new memories and paragraphs and post-it notes
Until I get it perfectly wrong
And my corkboard brain is covered in neon paper
and my hands are covered in paper cuts and glitter glue
and my heart becomes as covered
in as much barbed wire as there is stickers.

the scratch of a pen as it glides across the paper,
ink pooling in the words.
a stain on fingers here and there,
rustling pages full of thoughts.
sunlight filters in through curtains,
settling on the pages like snow on the ground.
ink bleeds through to the blank side of the paper but the pen keeps writing, regardless.