Dear Diary,

I never kept you. I tried jotting down a few lines using a red fat pencil, tempted by the idea or by the impression of your lock that rattled when the diary got moved from secret spot to bed top. And like the pencil was fat the lock was fat, made of cheap metal that made my fingers smell from handling. I am confident I tried using my own fingernail for a key because, those keys! Two bicycle-meets-skate key kinds of keys connected by a cheap ring. Who uses such ring keys to secure a lock any more? A metal lock that a frail old man could bust open with one stomp of his shoe. Who would care to open what tempted me with an idea?

Even I lost interest in you in the way things easily opened get discarded. The blank blue-lined pages, the muted floral backing glued to the soft leather. Gone. Nothing writ. No treasures enclosed. No butterfly, beetle, feather, love note pinned. Hair from a doll or a grandmother. Nothing of worth from us got written in you.

Don't feel neglected. Empty, perhaps. Fleeting, if that is inanimate of you. Not neglected. Here in the ether the empty, discarded diary gets immortalized.