When I was fifteen, I began collecting poems in a handmade journal my mother made for me.  The journal has been tucked away for over 40 years in a beautiful, wooden, “hope chest”  my Grandfather made for me.

A hope chest, when I was growing up, was a place to primarily collect household linens, such as embroidered pillow cases, in anticipation of becoming married someday, and having a dowry of sorts to begin that marriage.

I never filled mine with household linens.   Instead, I chose journals, memento’s, love letters, and a dried corsage or two.

I seemed to know in my fifteen year old heart, it was poetry that I would stay married to the longest.

Yours in poetry,

Carey