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In spite of the impending blizzard,
my friend and I agree, “Today
we have to burn our spiral notebooks.”
Those tortured scribbles of our youth
haunted our attics like madwomen,
voices of the grieving girls we were,
maps of the clumsy steps we took.
On fire, their beauty took our breath away.
Fire turned fear and wound to flaming
peonies. Sweat rained. Casting book
after book to the fabulous heat,
casting off anguish like souls between lives.
Fire turning pages in farewell,
wavering ash like shirred silk.
Suddenly, laughter collapses us,
sprung like the spiral spines,
free of their books.
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