Sea Glass

He said, many years ago,
that he found it difficult
to read my writing. 
It was uncomfortably close
to reading my diary.

I hold up this memory
like a piece of blue sea glass,
turning it this way and that
against the light,
trying to discern its meaning. 

Next door, the neighbor’s
car alarm has been malfunctioning,
going off at random times.
Tonight, it pipes up four times,
seeing who is awake and listening.

It is the night before my birthday,
or it is my birthday, depending on
the particular sound of alarm.
Each one seems like a message:
a love letter tied with a satin ribbon,

sealed into a bottle, and thrown
into the ocean; a flotilla of white balloons
released into the waiting sky
in a park after a funeral;
or lines of type painstakingly set on a page.

I have never kept a real diary,
so this will have to do.

Leah Browning is the author of three short nonfiction books and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Her writing has appeared in Four Way Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Threepenny Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Broadkill Review, Oyster River Pages, Watershed Review, Random Sample Review, Belletrist Magazine, Poetry South, The Stillwater Review, Superstition Review, Santa Ana River Review, Newfound, The Homestead Review, Bellows American Review, Clementine Unbound, The Literary Review, Freshwater, and elsewhere. Her work has also been published in several anthologies including 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium from Ashland Poetry Press and The Doll Collection from Terrapin Books.