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I'm no better than that perennial moth hovering

about the candle flame, toying with setting myself on

fire and going up in smoke, I told myself and went

into the house to read his poetry.

13 My Deepest Darkest Secret

. I took the notebook to my room and lay back on my bed. It was like opening a treasure chest and not knowing what you would find. His name, address and telephone number were on the inside of the front cover. Duncan's handwriting wasn't easy to decipher, but after a while, I understood how he made his letters and I was easily able to read what he had written.

Under his name, address and phone number, he wrote, In the event that this book is found, please call or return. A substantial reward will be given. If you don't call or return, a substantial curse will fall on you and your family.

I laughed to myself, turned the page and began to read.

Duncan hadn't been kidding when he had first told me that this notebook was his journal. It wasn't a day- to-day recording of his life as such, but it was about all his observations and things that happened to and around him. There were times when I had thought I would keep a journal, too, but not like this. He really was a poet. He didn't write verse. Nothing rhymed, but it was still very thoughtful poetry full of surprising ideas and thoughts and imagery. At times he sounded like someone who couldn't hate himself more, and then at times, he sounded like someone who thought he was above everyone else; everyone else was inferior. He compared most people around him to worker ants or drones, mindlessly doing their chores every day and never questioning why. He was especially critical of his fellow students, who, he said, had mirrors for faces.

I liked a lot of his ideas, but some things were disturbing, especially his views of his own parents. He never referred to them as my mother and my father, but it was obvious whom he meant.

On the first page, in fact, he wrote:

Like a bird she spreads her wings over me. She wants to protect me from evil,

But she doesn't realize she is keeping me in the dark,

And she is smothering me with too much love. Can I die happy that way?

Some of what he wrote nearly brought me to tears, but there were a few poems that brought smiles and laughter, too, like the one I assumed was about his English teacher.

Up and down the aisle she parades,

Unfolding her vowels and consonants So sharply she cuts her own tongue.

If she could, she'd march us out before a firing squad.

For misplacing a modifier or using the wrong tense. I imagine the walls in her house are covered with her husband's punishments. A thousand times he wrote:

I will not use ain't again.

And then about himself he wrote:

Too many nights I see stars backing into the darkness

And disappearing

The birds keep their distance, too.

Even the rain drops avoid falling on me.

I live in my own shadow

And whenever I turn to see where I have been,

I discover I have not moved.

I'm caught in the web I spun around myself,

Trapped in my own name.