Yellow Flowers

One of my friends gave me a notebook on New Year’s Eve in 2019. It’s a hardcover notebook with metal rings binding the pages together, which is my favorite kind, because when you open it to write, each page can truly lay flat for you.

The notebook has yellow flowers on the cover and on the pages inside. These flowers have witnessed so much pain and so much growth. My first entry was on March 22, 2020, and I have just a few pages left to fill.

I don’t journal every day, and most of the pages are adorned with poetry and doodles. But on the occasions when I do journal my thoughts, I realize just how much they are snippets of treasure, just as important as my art. This notebook has been with me through the kind of emotional pain that fills your body from head to toe. It has been key to my survival.

The best feeling in the world is finishing a notebook. Second best is beginning again in a new one. The next notebook I will pour myself into also has metal rings, and the hardcover is black with a gold inscription that says:

IN THE MIDST OF OUR LIVES, WE MUST FIND THE MAGIC THAT MAKES OUR SOULS SOAR.

Also on the cover, inscribed in gold, is a sun with long rays and a few simply drawn birds. There could not be a better time in my life for the transition from one notebook to the next. I received this notebook as a birthday gift from my family in 2020, so it has been patiently waiting for my words for almost a year.

This notebook is yellow because it’s gold. The lavender vines that string me together also bind these pages. I catch my own eye between lines that smell like rain. I’m most vulnerable when I’m undercover. Open worlds even when they’re closed, awake even when they’re dormant.