“I found a book of your poems” my mum tells me, out of the blue.
Oh. My. Gosh. WHAT DOES SHE MEAN??
My mind races, working harder than my team on a pressing deadline. I think back over all I’ve ever written that passes off as a poem. Like a near death experience, I can see flashes of every embarrassing love poem, hate poem, woe is me poem, funny poem, abstract poem and serious poem I’ve ever put together. (That awkward girl at the back of Art class? yep that might of been me).
Calmy, I reply “Oh? Poems?”
I’m hoping that it’s not one of the 100 diaries I kept as a teenager. I’m praying that she didn’t read it, though I know she already has. She’s been “cleaning” which means a totally different thing when you’re a mum, you see.
“Yep, you got 29 out of 30. A high school project, I think”
Crisis adverted.
She hands me a stack of stapled paper and snort at the hand made ‘book’ of poems I collected for Year 8 project. Phew, nothing in there incriminating apart from a strange drawing of a horse and badly typed verses of The Man From Snowy River.
I have mountains of old school stuff to sort through, report cards and letters from girlfriends (and boyfriends). But those diaries, those diaries, are probably left unread at this point.