A Poem by Margaret Holbrook

A Page in My Diary

Usually my days are planned.
Every event of the day
listed, right down to dinner.

Not so today.  I opened
my diary and found
a blank page, a day escaped.

This was mine, clear
and unblemished.  I could do
whatever I wanted -- and I did.

I searched for your
letters.  The photographs
I'd kept, and once found
studied every word, every face.

I found your number in the
book.  We hadn't spoken
in years.  We talked, covered
our lifetimes.

By evening you had
disappeared, been tidied
from all but memory.

I checked briefly on tomorrow,
it was already planned.

Margaret Holbrook is a writer of plays, poetry and fiction.  She lives in Cheshire, UK, and has had her work published in several anthologies, most recently Schooldays published by Paper Swans Press, and in the following magazines, Orbis, SLQ, The Dawntreader, The Journal, The SHOp, Reflections, Areopagus, the caterpillar, and online in The Poetry Shed and Napalm and Novocain.  Her first poetry collection, Hobby Horses Will Dance was published in 2014.  Margaret leads the Creative Writing Workshops for Chapel Arts in Chapel en le Frith, Derbyshire.