Carefully, I plucked it out and called my sister over. "Someone put their own secret in the book of secrets," I marveled as I turned it over to read words carefully written in purple ink. I'm scared to tell you that I love you in case you don't. I placed it back and kept looking. In between pages thirty-three and thirty-four was another. This time a scrap of lined note-book paper with the same purple ink and careful penmanship. I think I love you but you scare me.
"Not terribly interesting secrets," judged my sister and I had to agree.
Still, I had a picture in my mind. A girl sitting on a bench in the mall. She carefully writes out the secrets which occupy her days. The secrets themselves are small, but she's young. She'll have bigger, darker secrets in a few years; for now, there isn't anything else more important - or more worthy. She slips into the bookstore and walks the self help aisle until the coast is clear. She carefully slips the secrets into the book and puts it back on the shelf. She fantasizes that the object of her unnoticed affection will pick up the book. That the girl she secretly loves and fears will open the book and know who the secrets belong to.
I put the book back on the shelf. It wasn't for me.
Note: this is from an older journal entry that I wanted to repost in
bookshop_love. It seemed rather bookish as well. 