Dear Old Dingy Notebook

This is a poem submitted by Virginia Smith.

Dear old dingy notebook,

Your pages are faded, dark and marked with pencil shadings as your cover shades my thoughts.
Your binding isn’t as tight or your pages as white,
And I deeply apologize for those facts,
But I could never give back to you, for all you’ve been through for me...
You, dingy old notebook, were always there for me when I needed you.
You were a literal open book, listening and telling me everything I needed to know about myself.
You withstood words of hurt being carved into your pages, like the tree of a former love’s wilted heart.
You withstood words of anger being ripped from you as you dwindled away, leaf by leaf.
You became thin, silently covering your battle wounds without regard for yourself.
And that, dingy old notebook, is where I see myself in you.
You hold words of hurt, of anger, of happiness: all purely because someone needed you.
You let someone carve into you while they cried on you.
You, dear dingy notebook, have become me as much as I have reflected myself in you.
Without you, who knows where I would be?
So thank you dingy old notebook, for always loving me for me.

Love,
Virginia Smith